Photoinduced pseudospin effects in silicene beyond the off-resonant condition

We study the photoinduced manipulation of charge carriers in monolayer silicene subject to intense electromagnetic terahertz radiation. Considering the Dirac cone approximation and going beyond the off-resonant condition for large frequencies of the radiation field, where only virtual photon processes are allowed, we present the exact zero-momentum pseudospin polarization and numerical results for the quasienergy band structure and time-averaged density of states. We find that resonant processes, due to real photon emission and absorbtion processes, induce a band inversion that qualitatively modifies the quasienergy spectrum. These band-structure changes manifest themselves as an inversion of the averaged pseudospin polarization. Through the analysis of the time-averaged density of states we find that effective photoinduced gap manipulation can only be achieved in the intermediate and strong matter-radiation coupling regime where the off-resonant approximation breaks down.