Interplay between correlated electrons and quantum phonons in charge-ordered and Mott-insulating organic compounds

At an early stage of the photoinduced transition from an insulator to a metal in quasi-two-dimensional organic conductors, a coherent motion of electrons is observed in a charge-ordered insulator, but not so far in a Mott insulator. The mechanisms of these different photoinduced charge dynamics are theoretically studied by numerical solutions to the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for exact many-electron-phonon wave functions on small clusters of model systems. We use two-dimensional three-quarter-filled extended Holstein-Hubbard models on anisotropic triangular lattices. For a charge-ordered insulator on a lattice simplified from the structure of α-(BEDT-TTF)₂I₃, we indeed find a low-energy collective electronic motion coupled with quantum phonons even if the energy of photoexcitation is away from this energy. For a Mott insulator on a lattice simplified from the structure of κ-(BEDT-TTF)₂X, however, such a collective motion does not appear, and quantum phonons are hardly excited.