Dynamics of a Persistent Insulator-to-Metal Transition in Strained Manganite Films

Transition metal oxides possess complex free-energy surfaces with competing degrees of freedom. Photoexcitation allows shaping of such rich energy landscapes. In epitaxially strained La_{0.67}Ca_{0.33}MnO_{3}, optical excitation with a sub-100-fs pulse above 2  mJ/cm^{2} leads to a persistent metall...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2019-12, Vol.123 (26), p.267201, Article 267201
Main Authors: Teitelbaum, Samuel W, Ofori-Okai, B K, Cheng, Yu-Hsiang, Zhang, Jingdi, Jin, Feng, Wu, Wenbin, Averitt, Richard D, Nelson, Keith A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Coordination compounds
Phase transitions
Photoexcitation
Time dependence
Transition metal oxides
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Summary:Transition metal oxides possess complex free-energy surfaces with competing degrees of freedom. Photoexcitation allows shaping of such rich energy landscapes. In epitaxially strained La_{0.67}Ca_{0.33}MnO_{3}, optical excitation with a sub-100-fs pulse above 2  mJ/cm^{2} leads to a persistent metallic phase below 100 K. Using single-shot optical and terahertz spectroscopy, we show that this phase transition is a multistep process. We conclude that the phase transition is driven by partial charge-order melting, followed by growth of the persistent metallic phase on longer timescales. A time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau model can describe the fast dynamics of the reflectivity, followed by longer timescale in-growth of the metallic phase.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.267201