Direct and ultrafast probing of quantum many-body interactions through coherent two-dimensional spectroscopy: From weak- to strong-interaction regimes

Abstract

Interactions between particles in quantum many-body systems play a crucial role in determining the electric, magnetic, optical, and thermal properties of the system. The recent progress in the laser-pulse technique has enabled the manipulations and measurements of physical properties on ultrafast timescales. Here we propose a method for the direct and ultrafast probing of quantum many-body interaction through coherent two-dimensional (2D) spectroscopy. Using a two-band fermionic Hubbard model for the minimum two-site lattice system, we find that the 2D spectrum of a noninteracting system contains only diagonal peaks; the interparticle interaction manifests itself in the emergence of off-diagonal peaks in the 2D spectrum before all the peaks coalesce into a single diagonal peak as the system approaches the strongly interacting limit. The evolution of the 2D spectrum as a function of the time delay between the second and third laser pulses can provide important information on the ultrafast time variation of the interaction.