Coherent control of a structural phase transition in a solid-state surface system

Abstract

The desire to exert active optical control over matter is a unifying theme across multiple scientific disciplines, as exemplified by all-optical magnetic switching, light-induced metastable or exotic phases of solids and the coherent control of chemical reactions. Typically, these approaches dynamically steer a system towards states or reaction products far from equilibrium. In solids, metal-insulator transitions are an important target for optical manipulation, offering dramatic and ultrafast changes of the electronic and lattice properties. In this context, essential questions concern the role of coherence in the efficiencies and thresholds of such transitions. Here, we demonstrate coherent vibrational control over a metal-insulator structural phase transition in a quasi-one-dimensional solid-state surface system. An optical double-pulse excitation scheme is used to drive the system from the insulating to a metastable metallic state, and the corresponding structural changes are monitored by ultrafast low-energy electron diffraction. We observe strong oscillations in the switching efficiency as a function of the double-pulse delay, revealing the importance of vibrational coherence in two key structural modes governing the transition on a femtosecond timescale. This mode-selective coherent control of solids and surfaces could open new routes to switching chemical and physical functionalities, facilitated by metastable and non-equilibrium states.

Main text and supplementary materials

References in corpus (4)

• Metastable ferroelectricity in optically strained $SrTi{O}_3$
• Temporal and spectral fingerprints of ultrafast all-coherent spin switching
• Excited state band mapping and momentum-resolved ultrafast population dynamics in In/Si(111) nanowires investigated with XUV based time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy
• Optical control of vibrational coherence triggered by an ultrafast phase transition

Cited by in corpus (36)

• Nonthermal pathways to ultrafast control in quantum materials
• Circular dichroism of emergent chiral stacking orders in quasi-one-dimensional charge density waves
• Optical manipulation of electronic dimensionality in a quantum material
• Transient dynamics of the phase transition in VO2 revealed by mega electron-volt ultrafast electron diffraction
• The seeds and homogeneous nucleation of photoinduced nonthermal melting in semiconductors due to self-amplified local dynamic instability
• Imaging and Controlling Coherent Phonon Wave Packets in Single Graphene Nanoribbons
• Controlling Floquet states on ultrashort time scales
• All-optical seeding of a light-induced phase transition with correlated disorder
• The photoinduced hidden metallic phase of monoclinic VO2 driven by local nucleation via a self-amplification process
• Nanoscale self-organisation and metastable non-thermal metallicity in Mott insulators
• Real-time non-adiabatic dynamics in the one-dimensional Holstein model: Trajectory-based vs exact methods
• Origin of Immediate Damping of Coherent Oscillations in Photoinduced Charge Density Wave Transition
• Unconventional light-induced states visualized by ultrafast electron diffraction and microscopy
• Ultrafast loss of lattice coherence in the light-induced structural phase transition of V${}_2$O${}_3$
• Femtosecond electron diffraction reveals local disorder and local anharmonicity in thermoelectric SnSe
• Room-temperature non-volatile optical manipulation of polar order in a charge density wave
• Dynamic short-range correlation in photoinduced disorder phase transitions
• Time-domain study of coupled collective excitations in quantum materials
• InterPhon: Ab initio Interface Phonon Calculations within a 3D Electronic Structure Framework
• Megahertz cycling of ultrafast structural dynamics enabled by nanosecond thermal dissipation
• Vibrational response functions for multidimensional electronic spectroscopy in the adiabatic regime: a coherent-state approach
• Ultrafast switching of topological invariants by light-driven strain
• Momentum space separation of quantum path interferences between photons and surface plasmon polaritons in nonlinear photoemission microscopy
• Femtosecond trimer quench cycled at megahertz rates in the unconventional charge-density wave material $1\text{T’}-{\text{TaTe}}_2$
• Light-induced phase transitions in vanadium dioxide: a tensor network study
• Ab-initio Simulations of Coherent Phonon-Induced Pumping of Carriers in Zirconium Pentatelluride
• Angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy in a low energy electron microscope
• MgO surface lattice phonons observation during Interstellar ice transition
• Role of interlayer shear phonons on lattice symmetry switching in the transition metal dichalcogenide WTe${}_2$
• Light-wave coherent control of the insulator-to-metal transition in a strongly correlated material
• Giant Shear Displacement by Light-Induced Raman Force in Bilayer Graphene
• Nonvolatile optical control of interlayer stacking order in 1T-TaS2
• Coherence Control of Directional Nonlinear Photocurrent in Spatially Symmetric Systems
• Mode-selective ballistic pathway to a metastable electronic phase
• Light-induced shear phonon splitting and instability in bilayer graphene
• Herzberg-Teller coupling in coherent multidimensional spectroscopy: analytical response functions for multilevel systems