  An electron-phonon system at commensurate filling often displays charge order
(CO) in the ground state. Such a system subject to a laser pulse shows a wide
variety of behaviour. A weak pulse sets up low amplitude oscillations in the
order parameter, with slow decay to a slightly suppressed value. A strong pulse
leads to the destruction of the charge order with the order parameter showing
rapid, oscillatory, decay to zero. The regime in between, separating the weak
pulse CO sustained state from the strong pulse CO destroyed state, shows
complex dynamics characterised by multiple, pulse strength dependent, time
scales. It involves an initial rapid decay of the order parameter, followed by
a low amplitude quiescent state, and the power-law rise to a steady-state over
a timescale $\tau_{cr}$. We provide a complete characterisation of the dynamics
in this nonequilibrium problem for varying electron-phonon coupling and pulse
strength, examine the possibility of an effective "thermal" description of the
long time state, and present results on the multiple insulator-metal
transitions that show up.
