Nonlinear optical response in two-dimensional Mott insulators

Abstract

We study the third-order nonlinear optical susceptibility ${\ensuremath{\chi}}^{(3)}$ and photoexcited states of two-dimensional (2D) Mott insulators by using an effective model in the strong-coupling limit of a half-filled Hubbard model. In the numerically exact diagonalization calculations on finite-size clusters, we find that the coupling of charge and spin degrees of freedom plays a crucial role in the distribution of the dipole-allowed states with odd parity and the dipole-forbidden states with even parity in the photoexcited states. This is in contrast with the photoexcited states in one dimension, where the charge and spin degrees of freedom are decoupled. In the third-harmonic generation (THG) spectrum, the main contribution is found to come from the process of three-photon resonance associated with the odd-parity states. As a result, the two-photon resonance process is less pronounced in the THG spectrum. The calculated THG spectrum is compared with recent experimental data. We also find that ${\ensuremath{\chi}}^{(3)}$ with a cross-polarized configuration of pump and probe photons shows spectral distributions similar to ${\ensuremath{\chi}}^{(3)}$ with a copolarized configuration, although the weight is small. These findings will help analyses of the experimental data of ${\ensuremath{\chi}}^{(3)}$ in 2D Mott insulators.