Multiple supersonic phase fronts launched at a complex-oxide hetero-interface

Abstract

Selective optical excitation of a substrate lattice can drive phase changes across hetero-interfaces. This phenomenon is a non-equilibrium analogue of static strain control in heterostructures and may lead to new applications in optically controlled phase change devices. Here, we make use of time-resolved non-resonant and resonant x-ray diffraction to clarify the underlying physics, and to separate different microscopic degrees of freedom in space and time. We measure the dynamics of the lattice and that of the charge disproportionation in NdNiO3, when an insulator-metal transition is driven by coherent lattice distortions in the LaAlO3 substrate. We find that charge redistribution propagates at supersonic speeds from the interface into the NdNiO3 film, followed by a sonic lattice wave. When combined with measurements of magnetic disordering and of the metal-insulator transition, these results establish a hierarchy of events for ultrafast control at complex oxide hetero-interfaces.

arXiv comment20 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (8)

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• Ultrafast strain engineering in complex oxide heterostructures
• Role of magnetic and orbital ordering at the metal-insulator transition in NdNiO3
• Spatially resolved ultrafast magnetic dynamics launched at a complex-oxide hetero-interface
• Structural phase transitions in epitaxial perovskite films
• Tailoring the electronic transitions of NdNiO_3 films through (111)_pc oriented interfaces
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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Phono-magnetic analogs to opto-magnetic effects
• Strain Wave Pathway to Semiconductor-to-Metal Transition revealed by time resolved X-ray powder diffraction
• Disentangling lattice and electronic contributions to the metal-insulator transition from bulk vs. layer confined RNiO${}_3$
• Sum-frequency excitation of coherent magnons
• Tunable shear strain from resonantly driven optical phonons
• Terahertz field control of interlayer transport modes in cuprate superconductors
• Nucleation and growth bottleneck in the conductivity recovery dynamics of nickelate thin films
• Time-spliced X-ray Diffraction Imaging
• Energy Landscape analysis of metal-insulator transitions: theory and application to Ca${}_2$RuO${}_4$, $R$NiO${}_3$ and their heterostructures
• Terahertz-driven ultrafast dynamics of rare-earth nickelates by controlling only the charge degree of freedom
• Probing microscopic models for system-bath interactions via parametric driving