  We study the microscopic dynamics of competing ordered phases in a
two-dimensional correlated electron model, which is driven with a pulsed
electric field of finite duration. In order to go beyond a mean-field treatment
of the electronic interactions we adopt a large-$N$ generalization of the
Hubbard model and combine it with the semiclassical fermionic truncated Wigner
approximation as a time evolution method. This allows us to calculate dephasing
corrections to the mean-field dynamics and to obtain stationary states, which
we interpret as prethermal order. We use this framework to simulate the
light-induced transition between two competing phases (bond density wave and
staggered flux) and find that the post-pulse stationary state order parameter
values are not determined alone by the amount of absorbed energy but depend
explicitly on the driving frequency and field direction. While the transition
between the two prethermal phases takes place at similar total energies in the
low- and high-frequency regimes, we identify an intermediate frequency regime
for which it occurs with minimal heating.
