Nonperturbative Interband Response of a Bulk InSb Semiconductor Driven Off Resonantly by Terahertz Electromagnetic Few-Cycle Pulses

Intense multiterahertz pulses are used to study the coherent nonlinear response of bulk InSb by means of field-resolved four-wave mixing spectroscopy. At amplitudes above 5 MV/cm the signals show a clear temporal substructure which is unexpected in perturbative nonlinear optics. Simulations based on a model of a two-level quantum system demonstrate that in spite of the strongly off-resonant character of the excitation the high-field few-cycle pulses drive the interband resonances into a nonperturbative regime of Rabi flopping. The rotating wave approximation breaks down in this case and the system reaches a complete population inversion.