Laser-dressed partial density of states

Abstract The manipulation of material properties by laser light holds great promise for the development of future technologies. However, the full picture of the electronic response to laser driving remains to be uncovered. We present an approach to reveal details of the electron dynamics of laser-dressed materials, which consists of calculating and analysing the time-dependent partial density of states (PDOS) of materials during their interaction with a driving electromagnetic field. We show that the laser-dressed PDOS provides information about the structure of the bonds that form the laser-dressed electron density, analogous to the information that a PDOS can provide about the electron structure in a field-free case. We illustrate how our method can provide insights into the electron dynamics of materials in a site- and orbital-selective manner with calculations for a laser-dressed wurtzite ZnO crystal. Our work provides an analytical tool for the interpretation of subcycle-resolved experiments on laser-dressed materials and for the development of strategies for optical manipulation of material properties.