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The pump-probe experiment is typically used to study relaxation phenomena in nonlinear optical systems. Here we use it as a tool to study the phenomenon of anomalous Rabi oscillations in graphene that was predicted recently in single-layer graphene. Unlike conventional Rabi oscillations, anomalous Rabi oscillations are unique to graphene (and possibly to surface states of topological insulators (TIs)), attributable to the pseudospin (conventional spin for TI) degree of freedom and Dirac-fermion character of the graphene system. A pump pulse of a finite duration long enough to contain a large number of cycles induces a current density that oscillates with the frequency of the pump pulse. The amplitude associated with these fast oscillations is seen to exhibit much slower oscillations with a frequency given by ${ 2 \omega ^2_{\mathrm {R}} }/{ \omega } $ - the anomalous Rabi frequency, where ω is the conventional Rabi frequency and ω is the frequency of the external pump field. This effect is easily probed by a probe pulse subsequent to the pump, where it manifests itself as periodic oscillations of the probe susceptibility as a function of pump duration at each probe frequency. Alternatively, it is also seen as an oscillatory function of the pump-probe delay with other variables remaining fixed. This period corresponds to the anomalous Rabi frequency. An analysis of the previously reported experimental data confirms the presence of anomalous Rabi oscillations in graphene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphene, topological insulators (TI) and the Weyl semimetal are shown to be well-characterized using the phenomenon of anomalous Rabi oscillation (ARO). These oscillations occur far from conventional resonance and Floquet theory shows them to be unique to these systems. Of particular interest is the bulk topological insulator (TI) where the wave-vector dependent frequency of the ARO is seen to be gapped in topologically trivial situations and gapless when there is a non-vanishing Chern number. It is shown that the Chern number may be directly inferred by performing a pump-probe experiment in the bulk without referring to surface states. A simpler alternative to the Lindblad method is invoked in order to incorporate dephasing effects that despite leading to a non-unitary time evolution of the wave-function, is nevertheless, probability conserving. The differential transmission coefficient versus the pump pulse duration (when all else is held fixed) has the form of a sinusoidal function with an amplitude that decays as a power law in the pump duration (alternatively, the “area” of the pump pulse). The exponent of this power law decay is indicative of the Chern number of the bulk in case of TI and more generally indicative of the particular member of the family of materials that may be collectively referred to as - Dirac-Weyl materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Anomalous Rabi oscillations in single and bilayer graphene, in the absence of time-reversal symmetry, are described. The main findings of this work are that intra-layer sublattice space asymmetry has a remarkable effect on anomalous Rabi frequency in single and bilayer graphene, namely it is offset by the asymmetry parameter. However, the conventional Rabi frequency is nearly independent of the asymmetry parameter. Inter-layer asymmetry in bilayer graphene has an even more significant effect on anomalous Rabi frequency. When inter-layer asymmetry is taken into account, the anomalous Rabi frequency versus the external field goes through a minimum. The induced current in the frequency domain in these systems shows a finite threshold behavior even for vanishingly small applied fields. These offset oscillations are attributable to the asymmetry parameter in these systems, and are observable only for weak applied fields. For stronger applied fields these phenomena tend towards those without asymmetry. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]