Ultrafast Structural Phase Transition Driven by Photoinduced Melting of Charge and Orbital Order

Beaud, P.Johnson, S. L.Vorobeva, E.Staub, U.De Souza, R. A.Milne, C. J.Jia, Q. X.Ingold, G.2010-11-302010-11-302010-11-30200910.1103/PhysRevLett.103.155702https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/59730WOS:000270672100040We use femtosecond x-ray diffraction to probe directly the structural dynamics of a charge ordered and orbitally ordered thin film of La0.42Ca0.58MnO3 initiated by an ultrafast optical pulse. At low excitation fluences we observe the displacive excitation of a coherent optical A(g) phonon. Under high excitation conditions we observe a complete phase transition within 1 ps via the disappearance of a superlattice reflection. The initial step of the phase transition occurs on a time scale significantly faster than the 200 fs time resolution of our experiment.Perovskite ManganiteMetal TransitionExcitationUltrafast Structural Phase Transition Driven by Photoinduced Melting of Charge and Orbital Ordertext::journal::journal article::research article