Large-shift Raman scattering in insulating parent compounds of cuprate superconductors

Ultrafast charge recombination in a photoexcited Mott-Hubbard insulator

We present a calculation of the recombination rate of the excited holon-doublon pairs based on the two-dimensional model relevant for undoped cuprates, which shows that fast processes, observed in pump-probe experiments on Mott-Hubbard insulators in the picosecond range, can be explained even quantitatively with the multimagnon emission. The precondition is the existence of the Mott-Hubbard bound exciton of the s-type. We find that its decay is exponentially dependent on the Mott-Hubbard gap and on the magnon energy, with a small prefactor, which can be traced back to strong correlations and consequently large exciton-magnon coupling.

Parity-forbidden excitations of Sr(2)CuO(2)Cl(2) revealed by optical third-harmonic spectroscopy

We present the first study of nonlinear optical third-harmonic generation (THG) in the strongly correlated charge-transfer insulator Sr(2)CuO(2)Cl(2). For fundamental excitation in the near infrared, the THG spectrum reveals a strongly resonant response for photon energies near 0.7 eV. Polarization analysis reveals this novel resonance to be only partially accounted for by three-photon excitation to the optical charge-transfer exciton, and indicates that an even-parity state at 2 eV, with a(1g) symmetry, participates in the third-harmonic susceptibility.

Two-photon resonant third-harmonic generation in La2CuO4

Combining linear absorption and nonlinear third harmonic generation (THG) experiments, we investigate details of the electronic structure of the highly correlated electronic system in La2CuO4. We demonstrate strong THG mainly due to the charge transfer excitation from O (2p(sigma)) to Cu (3d(x2-y2)). The THG spectrum shows pronounced features due to three-photon and two-photon resonance enhancement as well as quantum interference effects. We obtain excellent agreement with a THG spectrum calculated in terms of the excitonic cluster model and can identify both odd and even symmetry excitation modes.