Ultrafast excitation and topological soliton formation in incommensurate charge density wave states

Abstract: Topological soliton is a nonperturbative excitation in commensurate density wave states and connects degenerate ground states. In incommensurate density wave states, ground states are continuously degenerate and topological soliton is reckoned to be smoothly connected to the perturbative phason excitation. We study the ultrafast nonequilibrium dynamics due to photoexcited electron-hole pair in a one-dimensional chain with an incommensurate charge density wave ground state. Time-resolved evolution reveals both perturbative excitation of collective modes and nonperturbative topological phase transition due to creating novel topological solitons, where the continuous complex order parameter with amplitude and phase is essential. We identify the nontrivial phase-winding solitons in the complex plane unique to this nonequilibrium state and capture it by a low-energy effective model. The perturbative temporal gap oscillation and the solitonic in-gap states enter the optical conductivity absorption edge and the spectral density related to spectroscopic measurement, providing concrete connections to real experiments.