Controlling multiphoton absorption in Dirac materials via pulse shaping

In this theoretical work, we describe pulse shaping techniques for the control of electron-hole pair production in graphene. Spectral optimization of short pulses is performed via differential evolution, a general purpose optimization algorithm. Differential evolution is combined with two different approaches to describe dynamics of charge carriers: Floquet theory for periodically driven systems and full time-dependent simulations for pulses of finite duration. Starting from the Floquet picture, we discuss the effect of the spectral content of the pulse on the closing of dynamical gaps in graphene, corresponding to resonance suppression. In the more thorough case of time-dependent calculations, we show that it is possible to vary the photo-induced carrier density by a factor of 4 for a fixed pulse energy. The potential of pulse shaping techniques for the control of scattering processes in Dirac materials is subsequently discussed.