English

The effect of dynamical Bloch oscillations on optical-field-induced current in a wide gap dielectric

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2013-07-22 v2 Other Condensed Matter

Abstract

We consider the motion of charge carriers in a bulk wide-gap dielectric interacting with a few-cycle laser pulse. A semiclassical model based on Bloch equations is applied to describe the emerging time-dependent macroscopic currents for laser intensities approaching the damage threshold. At such laser intensities, electrons can reach edges of the first Brillouin zone even for electron-phonon scattering rates as high as those known for SiO_2. We find that, whenever this happens, Brag-like reflections of electron waves, also known as Bloch oscillations, affect the dependence of the charge displaced by the laser pulse on its carrier-envelope phase.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1212.4881,
  title  = {The effect of dynamical Bloch oscillations on optical-field-induced current in a wide gap dielectric},
  author = {Peter Foldi and Mihaly G. Benedict and Vladislav S. Yakovlev},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1212.4881},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

This version corrects a mistake in the paper published by the New Journal of Physics: panel (a) of Fig. 9 depicts -s(t_0=0) rather than s(t_0=0)