Ultrafast light pulses, if they are sufficiently intense, can induce phase transitions on ultrafast timescales. It is now shown that when a system is first excited by a weak preparatory pulse, this generates local changes in structure that transiently lower the energy barrier to the phase transition, enabling high-speed and energy-efficient transitions.
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References
Horstmann, J. G. et al. Coherent control of a surface structural phase transition. Nature 583, 232–236 (2020). This paper reports the demonstration of coherent control of a phase transition.
Wall, S. et al. Ultrafast changes in lattice symmetry probed by coherent phonons. Nat. Commun. 3, 721 (2012). This paper reports the coherence lattice response of VO2 and how it changes with excitation.
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Simonov, A. & Goodwin, A. L. Designing disorder into crystalline materials. Nat. Rev. Chem. 4, 657–673 (2020). A review article that presents how local disorder can induce new functionality in materials.
de la Peña Muñoz, G. A. et al. Ultrafast lattice disordering can be accelerated by electronic collisional forces. Nat. Phys. 19, 1489–1494 (2023). A paper demonstrating that the scattering from the thermal bath is key for the photoinduced phase transition in VO2.
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This is a summary of: Johnson, A. S. et al. All-optical seeding of a light-induced phase transition with correlated disorder. Nat. Phys. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-024-02474-4 (2024).
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Enhancing the efficiency of light-induced phase transitions through transient local distortions. Nat. Phys. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-024-02475-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-024-02475-3
