High-Harmonic Generation in Mott Insulators

Using Floquet dynamical mean-field theory, we study the high-harmonic generation in the time-periodic steady states of wide-gap Mott insulators under ac driving. In the strong-field regime, the harmonic intensity exhibits multiple plateaus, whose cutoff energies ε_{cut}=U+mE_{0} scale with the Coulomb interaction U and the maximum field strength E_{0}. In this regime, the created doublons and holons are localized because of the strong field and the mth plateau originates from the recombination of mth nearest-neighbor doublon-holon pairs. In the weak-field regime, there is only a single plateau in the intensity, which originates from the recombination of itinerant doublons and holons. Here, ε_{cut}=Δ_{gap}+αE_{0}, with Δ_{gap} the band gap and α>1. We demonstrate that the Mott insulator shows a stronger high-harmonic intensity than a semiconductor model with the same dispersion as the Mott insulator, even if the semiconductor bands are broadened by impurity scattering to mimic the incoherent scattering in the Mott insulator.