Room-temperature non-volatile optical manipulation of polar order in a charge density wave

Abstract

Utilizing ultrafast light-matter interaction to manipulate electronic states of quantum materials is an emerging area of research in condensed matter physics. It has significant implications for the development of future ultrafast electronic devices. However, the ability to induce long-lasting metastable electronic states in a fully reversible manner is a long-standing challenge.Here, by using ultrafast laser excitations, we demonstrate the capability to manipulate the electronic polar states in the charge-density-wavematerial EuTe4 in a non-volatile manner. The process is completely reversible and is achieved at room temperature with an all-optical approach. Each induced non-volatile state brings about modifications to the electrical resistance and second harmonic generation intensity. The results point to layer-specific phase inversion dynamics by which photoexcitation mediates the stacking polar order of the system. Our findings extend the scope of non-volatile all-optical control of electronic states to ambient conditions, and highlight a distinct role of layerdependent phase manipulation in quasi-two-dimensional systems with inherent sublayer stacking orders.

19 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Polar charge density wave in a superconductor with crystallographic chirality
• Large moiré superstructure of stacked incommensurate charge density waves
• Enhanced thermopower in a magnetic semiconductor EuTe4 with multiple charge-density-wave instabilities/
• Bidirectional ultrafast control of charge density waves via phase competition