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X-ray measurements were performed at BL3 of SACLA with the approval of the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (JASRI) (proposal nos. 2018A8007, 2019A8038 and 2019B8075). A.S.J. acknowledges support from ERC AdG NOQIA; MICIN/AEI (PGC2018-0910.13039/501100011033, CEX2019-000910-S/10.13039/501100011033, PID2022-137817NA-I00, Plan National FIDEUA PID2019-106901GB-I00, FPI; MICIIN with funding from European Union NextGenerationEU (PRTR-C17.I1): QUANTERA MAQS PCI2019-111828-2); MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and by the 'European Union NextGeneration EU/PRTR' QUANTERA DYNAMITE PCI2022-132919 within the QuantERA II Programme that has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101017733 Proyectos de I + D + I 'Retos Colaboracion' QUSPIN (RTC2019-007196-7); Fundacio Cellex; Fundacio Mir-Puig; Generalitat de Catalunya (European Social Fund FEDER and CERCA programme, AGAUR Grant No. 2021 SGR 01452, QuantumCAT\U16-011424, co-funded by ERDF Operational Program of Catalonia 2014-2020); Barcelona Supercomputing Center MareNostrum (FI-2023-1-0013); EU (PASQuan S2.1, 101113690); EU Horizon 2020 FET-OPEN OPTOlogic (Grant No. 899794); EU Horizon Europe Programme (Grant Agreement 101080086-NeQST), National Science Centre, Poland (Symfonia Grant No. 2016/20/W/ST4/00314); ICFO Internal 'QuantumGaudi' project; and European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 101029393 (STREDCH) and No. 847648 ('La Caixa' Junior Leader fellowships ID100010434: LCF/BQ/PI19/11690013, LCF/BQ/PI20/11760031, LCF/BQ/PR20/11770012, LCF/BQ/PR21/11840013). This project has received funding from the 'Presidencia de la Agencia Estatal de Investigacion' within the PRE2020-094404 predoctoral fellowship, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Ref. No. PID2021-122516OB-I00, Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence CEX2019-000925-S 10.13039/501100011033). T.K. acknowledges support from JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Nos. JP19H05782, JP21H04974 and JP21K18944). E.P. acknowledges the support from IJC2018-037384-I funded by MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 as well as the support from the CNRS and the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), under grant ANR-22-CPJ2-0053-01, funded/co-funded by the European Union (ERC, PhotoDefect, 101076203). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. S.K. acknowledges support from National Research Foundation of Korea grant NRF- 2019R1A6B2A02100883. G.A.d.l.P.M., V.K. and M.T. were supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences through the Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering, under Contract No. DE-AC02-76SF00515. S.E.W. was supported by Carlsbergfondet (CF20-0169).

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All-optical seeding of a light-induced phase transition with correlated disorder

Publicated to:Nature Physics. 20 (-): 970-975 - 2024-04-11 20(-), DOI: 10.1038/s41567-024-02474-4

Authors: Johnson, Allan S; Pastor, Ernest; Batlle-Porro, Sergi; Benzidi, Hind; Katayama, Tetsuo; Munoz, Gilberto A de la Pena; Krapivin, Viktor; Kim, Sunam; Lopez, Nuria; Trigo, Mariano; Wall, Simon E

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Abstract

Ultrafast manipulation of vibrational coherence provides a route to control the structure of solids. However, this strategy can only induce long-range correlations and cannot modify atomic structure locally, which is a requirement for many technological applications such as non-volatile electronics. Here we demonstrate that ultrafast lasers can generate incoherent structural fluctuations that are more efficient for material control than coherent vibrations, extending optical control to a wide range of materials. We observe that local non-equilibrium lattice distortions generated by a weak laser pulse reduce the energy barrier to switch between insulating and metallic states in vanadium dioxide. Seeding inhomogeneous structural fluctuations presents an alternative, more energy-efficient, route for controlling materials that may be applicable to all solids, including those used in data- and energy-storage devices. Controlling phase transitions in solids is crucial for many applications. Ultrafast laser pulses have now been shown to enable the energy-efficient generation of structural fluctuations in VO2 by harnessing the correlated disorder in the material.

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