Quantum control of Hubbard excitons

Nature Materials (2026)Cite this article 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. 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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.These authors contributed equally: Denitsa R. Baykusheva, Deven Carmichael.Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USADenitsa R. Baykusheva, Filippo Glerean, Tepie Meng, Pedro B. M. De Oliveira & Matteo MitranoInstitute of Science and Technology Austria, Klosterneuburg, AustriaDenitsa R. BaykushevaDepartment of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USADeven Carmichael & Martin ClaassenInstitut für Theorie der Statistischen Physik, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, GermanyClara S. Weber & Dante M. KennesJARA – Fundamentals of Future Information Technology, Aachen, GermanyClara S. Weber & Dante M. KennesMax Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Center for Free-Electron Laser Science, Hamburg, GermanyI-Te Lu, Angel Rubio & Dante M. KennesDepartment of Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USAChristopher C. Homes, Igor A. Zaliznyak, G. D. Gu & Mark P. M. DeanInitiative for Computational Catalysis, Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Simons Foundation Flatiron Institute, New York, NY, USAAngel RubioSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarD.R.B. and M.M. conceived the experiment. M.M. supervised the project. D.R.B. conducted the ultrafast optical measurements with support from F.G., P.B.M.D.O. and T.M. D.R.B. analysed the data with help from all coauthors. C.C.H. characterized the equilibrium optical response of Sr2CuO3. D.C. and M.C. calculated the holon–doublon and three-level Floquet response. C.S.W. and I.-T.L. performed theoretical analyses and interpreted the data under the supervision of D.M.K., A.R., M.C. and M.M. Single crystals were synthesized by I.A.Z. and G.D.G. The manuscript was written by M.M. and M.C. with input from all other authors.Correspondence to Denitsa R. Baykusheva, Martin Claassen or Matteo Mitrano.The authors declare no competing interests.Nature Materials thanks the anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.Supplementary Sections 1–7 and Figs. 1–10.Python code computing equilibrium and Floquet THG of the holon–doublon model.Instructions.Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.Reprints and permissionsBaykusheva, D.R., Carmichael, D., Weber, C.S. et al. Quantum control of Hubbard excitons. Nat. Mater. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-026-02517-6Download citationReceived: 29 June 2025Accepted: 26 January 2026Published: 09 March 2026Version of record: 09 March 2026DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-026-02517-6Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative