Enhancement of impact ionization in Hubbard clusters by disorder and next-nearest-neighbor hopping

We perform time-resolved exact diagonalization of the Hubbard model with time dependent hoppings on small clusters of up to $12$ sites. Here, the time dependence originates from a classic electromagnetic pulse, which mimics the impact of a photon. We investigate the behavior of the double occupation and spectral function after the pulse for different cluster geometries and on-site potentials. We find impact ionization in all studied geometries except for one-dimensional chains. Adding next-nearest neighbor hopping to the model leads to a significant enhancement of impact ionization, as does disorder and geometric frustration of a triangular lattice.