Recent experiments [1,2] indicate that selective optical driving of phonons may generate or enhance ordered phases in strongly correlated quantum materials. In my talk I will introduce quantum optically inspired models that may help explain and engineer such phenomena and discuss how these may be quantum simulated and investigated in systems of ultracold atoms. In particular, I will consider a driven fermionic Hubbard model in the strongly correlated limit where the onsite interaction dominates over the kinetic energy [3]. I will show how driving induced alternating periodic modulation of lattice site energies changes the nature of the system into an attractive Luttinger liquid and how this leads to enhanced fermion pairing. I will also discuss laser cooling inspired proposals for using optical driving to cool phase fluctuations in Josephson junction arrays which may be applicable to layered superconductors [4].
[1] D. Fausti, R. I. Tobey, N. Dean, S. Kaiser, A. Dienst, M. C. Hoffmann, S. Pyon, T. Takayama, H. Takagi, and A. Cavalleri, Light-Induced Superconductivity in a Stripe-Ordered Cuprate, Science 331, 189 (2011).
[2] M. Mitrano, A. Cantaluppi, D. Nicoletti, S. Kaiser, A. Perucchi, S. Lupi, P. Di Pietro, D. Pontiroli, M. Ricco, S.R. Clark, D. Jaksch and A. Cavalleri, Possible light-induced superconductivity in K3C60 at high temperature, Nature 530, 461-464 (2016).
[3] J. Coulthard, S.R. Clark, S. Al-Assam, A. Cavalleri and D. Jaksch, Enhancement of super-exchange pairing in the periodically-driven Hubbard model, arXiv:1608.03964 (2016).
[4] S.J. Denny, S.R. Clark, Y. Laplace, A. Cavalleri and D. Jaksch, Proposed Parametric Cooling of Bilayer Cuprate Superconductors by Terahertz Excitation, Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 137001 (2015).