Ultrafast lattice disordering can be accelerated by electronic collisional forces

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Munoz, Gilberto A. de la Pena, Correa, Alfredo A., Yang, Shan, Delaire, Olivier, Huang, Yijing, Johnson, Allan S., Katayama, Tetsuo, Krapivin, Viktor, Pastor, Ernest, Reis, David A., Teitelbaum, Samuel, Vidas, Luciana, Wall, Simon, Trigo, Mariano
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Munoz, Gilberto A. de la Pena
Correa, Alfredo A.
Yang, Shan
Delaire, Olivier
Huang, Yijing
Johnson, Allan S.
Katayama, Tetsuo
Krapivin, Viktor
Pastor, Ernest
Reis, David A.
Teitelbaum, Samuel
Vidas, Luciana
Wall, Simon
Trigo, Mariano
author_facet Munoz, Gilberto A. de la Pena
Correa, Alfredo A.
Yang, Shan
Delaire, Olivier
Huang, Yijing
Johnson, Allan S.
Katayama, Tetsuo
Krapivin, Viktor
Pastor, Ernest
Reis, David A.
Teitelbaum, Samuel
Vidas, Luciana
Wall, Simon
Trigo, Mariano
contents In the prevalent picture of ultrafast structural phase transitions, the atomic motion occurs in a slowly varying potential energy surface determined adiabatically by the fast electrons. However, this ignores non-conservative forces caused by electron-lattice collisions, which can significantly influence atomic motion. Most ultrafast techniques only probe the average structure and are less sensitive to random displacements, and therefore do not detect the role played by non-conservative forces in phase transitions. Here we show that the lattice dynamics of the prototypical insulator-to-metal transition of VO2 cannot be described by a potential energy alone. We use the sample temperature to control the preexisting lattice disorder before ultrafast photoexcitation across the phase transition and our ultrafast diffuse scattering experiments show that the fluctuations characteristic of the rutile metal develop equally fast (120 fs) at initial temperatures of 100 K and 300 K. This indicates that additional non-conservative forces are responsible for the increased lattice disorder. These results highlight the need for more sophisticated descriptions of ultrafast phenomena beyond the Born-Oppenheimer approximation as well as ultrafast probes of spatial fluctuations beyond the average unit cell measured by diffraction.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_13133
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Ultrafast lattice disordering can be accelerated by electronic collisional forces
Munoz, Gilberto A. de la Pena
Correa, Alfredo A.
Yang, Shan
Delaire, Olivier
Huang, Yijing
Johnson, Allan S.
Katayama, Tetsuo
Krapivin, Viktor
Pastor, Ernest
Reis, David A.
Teitelbaum, Samuel
Vidas, Luciana
Wall, Simon
Trigo, Mariano
Strongly Correlated Electrons
In the prevalent picture of ultrafast structural phase transitions, the atomic motion occurs in a slowly varying potential energy surface determined adiabatically by the fast electrons. However, this ignores non-conservative forces caused by electron-lattice collisions, which can significantly influence atomic motion. Most ultrafast techniques only probe the average structure and are less sensitive to random displacements, and therefore do not detect the role played by non-conservative forces in phase transitions. Here we show that the lattice dynamics of the prototypical insulator-to-metal transition of VO2 cannot be described by a potential energy alone. We use the sample temperature to control the preexisting lattice disorder before ultrafast photoexcitation across the phase transition and our ultrafast diffuse scattering experiments show that the fluctuations characteristic of the rutile metal develop equally fast (120 fs) at initial temperatures of 100 K and 300 K. This indicates that additional non-conservative forces are responsible for the increased lattice disorder. These results highlight the need for more sophisticated descriptions of ultrafast phenomena beyond the Born-Oppenheimer approximation as well as ultrafast probes of spatial fluctuations beyond the average unit cell measured by diffraction.
title Ultrafast lattice disordering can be accelerated by electronic collisional forces
topic Strongly Correlated Electrons
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.13133