Quantum control of Hubbard excitons
Baykusheva DR, Carmichael D, Weber CS, Lu IT, Glerean F, Meng T, De Oliveira PBM, Homes CC, Zaliznyak IA, Gu GD, Dean MPM, Rubio A, Kennes DM, Claassen M, Mitrano M. 2026. Quantum control of Hubbard excitons. Nature Materials.
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Author
Baykusheva, Denitsa RangelovaISTA 
;
Carmichael, Deven;
Weber, Clara S.;
Lu, I. Te;
Glerean, Filippo;
Meng, Tepie;
De Oliveira, Pedro B.M.;
Homes, Christopher C.;
Zaliznyak, Igor A.;
Gu, G. D.;
Dean, Mark P.M.;
Rubio, Angel
All
;
Carmichael, Deven;
Weber, Clara S.;
Lu, I. Te;
Glerean, Filippo;
Meng, Tepie;
De Oliveira, Pedro B.M.;
Homes, Christopher C.;
Zaliznyak, Igor A.;
Gu, G. D.;
Dean, Mark P.M.;
Rubio, Angel
All
Corresponding author has ISTA affiliation
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Abstract
Quantum control of the many-body wavefunction is a central challenge in quantum materials research, as it could yield a precise control knob to manipulate emergent phenomena. Floquet engineering, the coherent dressing of quantum states with periodic non-resonant optical fields, has become an important strategy for quantum control. Most applications to solid-state systems have targeted weakly interacting or single-ion states, leaving the manipulation of many-body wavefunctions largely unexplored. Here we use Floquet engineering to achieve quantum control of a strongly correlated Hubbard exciton in the one-dimensional Mott insulator Sr2CuO3. A non-resonant mid-infrared optical field coherently dresses the exciton wavefunction, driving its rotation between bright and dark states. We use resonant third-harmonic generation to quantify ultrafast π/2 rotations on the Bloch sphere spanned by these exciton states. Our work advances the quest towards programmable control of correlated states and exciton-based quantum sensing.
Publishing Year
Date Published
2026-03-09
Journal Title
Nature Materials
Publisher
Springer Nature
Acknowledgement
We thank K. Burch, M. Buzzi, P. Cappellaro, A. Cavalleri, E. Demler, M. Eckstein, T. Giamarchi, D. Hsieh, H. Okamoto, D. Reis, T. Tohyama, P. Werner and A. Yacoby for insightful discussions. We thank B. Baxley for assistance with graphics. This work was primarily supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Early Career Award Program, under award no. DE-SC0022883 (D.R.B., F.G., T.M. and M.M.) and award no. DE-SC0024494 (D.C. and M.C.). D.C. and P.B.M.D.O. acknowledge funding from the NSF GRFP under grant nos. DGE-1845298 and DGE 2140743, respectively. The work performed at Brookhaven National Laboratory was supported by the US Department of Energy, Division of Materials Science, under contract no. DE-SC0012704. We acknowledge funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – 531215165 (Research Unit “OPTIMAL’). This work was supported by the Cluster of Excellence ‘Advanced Imaging of Matter’ (AIM) and the Max Planck-New York City Center for Non-Equilibrium Quantum Phenomena. The Flatiron Institute is a division of the Simons Foundation. Simulations were performed with computing resources granted by RWTH Aachen University under projects rwth0752 and rwth1258. We acknowledge computing time on the supercomputer JURECA52 at Forschungszentrum Jülich under the project ID enhancerg.
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IST-REx-ID
Cite this
Baykusheva DR, Carmichael D, Weber CS, et al. Quantum control of Hubbard excitons. Nature Materials. 2026. doi:10.1038/s41563-026-02517-6
Baykusheva, D. R., Carmichael, D., Weber, C. S., Lu, I. T., Glerean, F., Meng, T., … Mitrano, M. (2026). Quantum control of Hubbard excitons. Nature Materials. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-026-02517-6
Baykusheva, Denitsa Rangelova, Deven Carmichael, Clara S. Weber, I. Te Lu, Filippo Glerean, Tepie Meng, Pedro B.M. De Oliveira, et al. “Quantum Control of Hubbard Excitons.” Nature Materials. Springer Nature, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-026-02517-6.
D. R. Baykusheva et al., “Quantum control of Hubbard excitons,” Nature Materials. Springer Nature, 2026.
Baykusheva DR, Carmichael D, Weber CS, Lu IT, Glerean F, Meng T, De Oliveira PBM, Homes CC, Zaliznyak IA, Gu GD, Dean MPM, Rubio A, Kennes DM, Claassen M, Mitrano M. 2026. Quantum control of Hubbard excitons. Nature Materials.
Baykusheva, Denitsa Rangelova, et al. “Quantum Control of Hubbard Excitons.” Nature Materials, Springer Nature, 2026, doi:10.1038/s41563-026-02517-6.
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