Photoinduced Prethermalization Phenomena in Correlated Metals

Prethermalization phenomena in weakly interacting Hubbard systems after electric-field pump pulses with a finite duration are studied. The Hubbard interaction U is taken into account up to second order, by applying the prethermalization paradigm for time-dependent interaction protocols, and the electric field strength beyond linear order. A scaling behavior with pulse duration is observed for the absorbed energy as well as individual prethermalized momentum occupation numbers, which are attributed to the leading quadratic orders in interaction and electric field. It is shown that a pronounced nonthermal momentum distribution can be created with pump pulses of suitable resonance frequencies, and how to distinguish them from thermal states is discussed.