  We show that optical excitation of the Mott insulating phase of the
one-dimensional Hubbard model can create a state possessing two of the
hallmarks of superconductivity: a nonvanishing charge stiffness and long-ranged
pairing correlation. By employing the exact diagonalization method, we find
that the superposition of the $\eta$-pairing eigenstates induced by the optical
pump exhibits a nonvanishing charge stiffness and a pairing correlation that
decays very slowly with system size in sharp contrast to the behavior of an
ensemble of thermally excited eigenstates, which has a vanishing charge
stiffness and no long-ranged pairing correlations. We show that the charge
stiffness is indeed directly associated with the $\eta$-pairing correlation in
the Hubbard model. Our finding demonstrates that optical pumping can actually
lead to superconducting-like properties on the basis of the $\eta$-pairing
states.
