Two Component Heat Diffusion Observed in CMR Manganites

Abstract

We investigate the low-temperature electron, lattice, and spin dynamics of LaMnO_3 (LMO) and La_0.7Ca_0.3MnO_3 (LCMO) by resonant pump-probe reflectance spectroscopy. Probing the high-spin d-d transition as a function of time delay and probe energy, we compare the responses of the Mott insulator and the double-exchange metal to the photoexcitation. Attempts have previously been made to describe the sub-picosecond dynamics of CMR manganites in terms of a phenomenological three temperature model describing the energy transfer between the electron, lattice and spin subsystems followed by a comparatively slow exponential decay back to the ground state. However, conflicting results have been reported. Here we first show clear evidence of an additional component in the long term relaxation due to film-to-substrate heat diffusion and then develop a modified three temperature model that gives a consistent account for this feature. We confirm our interpretation by using it to deduce the bandgap in LMO. In addition we also model the non-thermal sub-picosecond dynamics, giving a full account of all observed transient features both in the insulating LMO and the metallic LCMO.

6 pages, 5 figures http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.81.064434 v2: Abstract corrected

References in corpus (6)

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• Ground state and excited state properties of LaMnO${}_3$ from full-potential calculation
• Temperature dependent d-d excitations in manganites probed by resonant inelastic x-ray scattering
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Cited by in corpus (4)

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• Photo-induced insulator-to-metal transition and coherent acoustic phonon propagation in LaCoO${}_3$ thin films explored by femtosecond pump-probe ellipsometry
• Evolution of the magnetic and polaronic order of $\mathrm{P}{\mathrm{r}}_{1/2}\mathrm{C}{\mathrm{a}}_{1/2}\mathrm{Mn}{\mathrm{O}}_3$ following an ultrashort light pulse