2020/11/30 by J. Maklar, Y. W. Windsor, C. W. Nicholson +17
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Lattice (music) #Non-equilibrium thermodynamics #Organic and Molecular Conductors Research #Phonon #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Spectroscopy #Superconductivity #Thermal #Thermal fluctuations #Topological Materials and Phenomena #Transient (computer programming) #Ultrashort pulse #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-021-22778-w
23 pages, 14 figures
openalex created_date 2020/11/23 · arxiv created 2021/03/16 · openalex publication_date 2021/05/03 · arxiv updated 2021/06/09 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
The interaction of many-body systems with intense light pulses may lead to novel emergent phenomena far from equilibrium. Recent discoveries, such as the optical enhancement of the critical temperature in certain superconductors and the photo-stabilization of hidden phases, have turned this field into an important research frontier. Here, we demonstrate nonthermal charge-density-wave (CDW) order at electronic temperatures far greater than the thermodynamic transition temperature. Using time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and time-resolved X-ray diffraction, we investigate the electronic and structural order parameters of an ultrafast photoinduced CDW-to-metal transition. Tracking the dynamical CDW recovery as a function of electronic temperature reveals a behaviour markedly different from equilibrium, which we attribute to the suppression of lattice fluctuations in the transient nonthermal phonon distribution. A complete description of the system's coherent and incoherent order-parameter dynamics is given by a time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau framework, providing access to the transient potential energy surfaces.