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

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.

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)

References in corpus (3)

• Bloch-Zener oscillations
• Metal nanofilm in strong ultrafast optical fields
• Theory of strong-field injection and control of photocurrent in dielectrics and wide bandgap semiconductors

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• Imaging interatomic electron current in crystals with ultrafast resonant x-ray scattering
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