Related papers: Ultrafast lattice disordering can be accelerated b…
Recent experiments suggest that atomic disordering dynamics are more universal than conventional coherent processes in photoinduced phase transitions (PIPTs), yet its mechanism remains unclear. Using real-time time-dependent density…
Melting is an everyday phase transition that is determined by thermodynamic parameters like temperature and pressure. In contrast, ultrafast melting is governed by the microscopic response to a rapid energy input and, thus, can reveal the…
The transition between different states in manganites can be driven by various external stimuli. Controlling these transitions with light opens the possibility to investigate the microscopic path through which they evolve. We performed…
We use ultrafast electron crystallography to study structural changes induced in graphite by a femtosecond laser pulse. At moderate fluences of ~< 21mJ/cm^2, lattice vibrations are observed to thermalize on a time scale of ~8ps. At higher…
Ultrafast light pulses can modify the electronic properties of quantum materials by perturbing the underlying, intertwined degrees of freedom. In particular, iron-based superconductors exhibit a strong coupling among electronic nematic…
The study of photoexcited strongly correlated materials is attracting growing interest since their rich phase diagram often translates into an equally rich out-of-equilibrium behavior, including non-thermal phases and photoinduced phase…
We report the lattice dynamics of transition metal thin films by using the ultrafast electron diffraction. We observe a suppression of the diffraction intensity in a few picosecond after the photoexcitation, which is directly interpreted as…
We investigate the ultrafast dynamics of photo-induced non-thermal lattice disorder in a polycrystalline aluminium thin film to elucidate transient short- and long-range lattice distortions, their thermalization and electron-phonon coupling…
Lattice dynamics and molecular dynamics studies of the oxides UO2 and Li2O in their normal as well as superionic phase are reported. Lattice dynamics calculations have been carried out using a shell model in the quasiharmonic approximation.…
Light-manipulation of correlated electronic phases in solids offers the tantalizing prospect of realizing electronic devices operating at the ultrafast time-scale. In this context, the experimental realization of non-equilibrium transitions…
The electronic and structural properties of a material are strongly determined by its symmetry. Changing the symmetry via a photoinduced phase transition offers new ways to manipulate material properties on ultrafast timescales. However, in…
We review our studies of elastic lattices driven by an external force $F$ in the presence of random disorder, which correspond to the case of vortices in superconducting thin films driven by external currents. Above a critical force $F_c$…
Selective optical excitation of a substrate lattice can drive phase changes across hetero-interfaces. This phenomenon is a non-equilibrium analogue of static strain control in heterostructures and may lead to new applications in optically…
The ultrafast electronic structures of the charge density wave material 1T-TiSe$_2$ were investigated by high-resolution time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. We found that the quasiparticle populations drove ultrafast…
Phase transitions and their associated crossovers are imprinted in the behavior of fluctuations. Motivated by recent experiments on ultracold atoms in optical lattices, we compute the thermodynamic density fluctuations $\delta N^2$ of the…
Formation of electronic nematicity is a common thread of unconventional superconductors. In iron-based materials, the long-range nematic order is revealed by the orthorhombic lattice distortion, which importance is a highly controversial…
Optically induced ultrafast electronic excitations with sufficiently long lifetimes may cause strong effects on phase transitions like structural and nonmetal to metal ones. Examples are transitions diamond to graphite, graphite to…
Metals exhibit nonequilibrium electron and lattice subsystems at transient times following femtosecond laser excitation. In the past four decades, various optical spectroscopy and time-resolved diffraction methods have been used to study…
Transition metal dichalcogenides with superperiodic lattice distortions have been widely investigated as the platform of ultrafast structural phase manipulations. Here we performed ultrafast electron diffraction on room-temperature…
Ultrafast laser excitation of a metal causes correlated, highly nonequilibrium dynamics of electronic and ionic degrees of freedom, which are however only poorly captured by the widely-used two-temperature model. Here we develop an…