Within a Lagrangian formalism, we derive the time-dependent Gutzwiller approximation for general multi-band Hubbard models. Our approach explicitly incorporates the coupling between time-dependent variational parameters and a time-dependent density matrix from which we obtain dynamical correlation functions in the linear-response regime. Our results are illustrated for the one-band model where we show that the interacting system can be mapped to an effective problem of fermionic quasiparticles coupled to 'doublon' (double occupancy) bosonic fluctuations. The latter have an energy on the scale of the on-site Hubbard repulsion U in the dilute limit but become soft at the Brinkman–Rice transition, which is shown to be related to an emerging conservation law of doublon charge and the associated gauge invariance. Coupling with the boson mode produces a structure in the charge response and we find that a similar structure appears in dynamical mean-field theory.
Pump-probe experiments have turned out as a powerful tool in order to study the dynamics of competing orders in a large variety of materials. The corresponding analysis of the data often relies on standard linear-response theory generalized to nonequilibrium situations. Here we examine the validity of such an approach for the charge and pairing response of systems with charge-density wave and (or) superconducting (SC) order. Our investigations are based on the attractive Hubbard model which we study within the time-dependent Hartree-Fock approximation. In particular, we calculate the quench and pump-probe dynamics for SC and charge order parameters in order to analyze the frequency spectra and the coupling of the probe field to the specific excitations. Our calculations reveal that the “linear-response assumption” is justified for small to moderate nonequilibrium situations (i.e., pump pulses) in the case of a purely charge-ordered ground state. However, the pump-probe dynamics on top of a superconducting ground state is determined by phase and amplitude modes which get coupled far from the equilibrium state indicating the failure of the linear-response assumption.