Rabi oscillations between dissipative Bloch bands

Within a two-band tight-binding model driven by DC–AC electric fields, we investigate the dynamics of electrons with Markoffian dephasing. We find that Rabi oscillations between the Bloch bands under the resonant condition may be destroyed by scattering from lattice imperfections. Through a perturbative calculation, we also obtain the effective decay time for the approach to equal Bloch band populations under conditions of small interband coupling and in the long-time limit. The decay rate shows characteristic sharp peaks at values of the parameters that give a signature of Rabi oscillations, and quasienergy spectra display avoided crossings at the same time.