Journal article

Theory of photoinduced ultrafast switching to a spin-orbital ordered hidden phase

  • Li, Jiajun Department of Physics, University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
  • Strand, Hugo U. R. Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute, New York, USA - Department of Quantum Matter Physics, University of Geneva, Switzerland. - Department of Physics, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Werner, Philipp Department of Physics, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Eckstein, Martin Department of Physics, University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
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    02.11.2018
Published in:
  • Nature Communications. - 2018, vol. 9, no. 1, p. 4581
English Photo-induced hidden phases are often observed in materials with intertwined orders. Understanding the formation of these non-thermal phases is challenging and requires a resolution of the cooperative interplay between different orders on the ultra-short timescale. In this work, we demonstrate that non-equilibrium photo-excitations can induce a state with spin-orbital orders entirely different from the equilibrium state in the three-quarter-filled two-band Hubbard model. We identify a general mechanism governing the transition to the hidden state, which relies on a non-thermal partial melting of the intertwined orders mediated by photoinduced charge excitations in the presence of strong spin-orbital exchange interactions. Our study theoretically confirms the crucial role played by orbital degrees of freedom in the light-induced dynamics of strongly correlated materials and it shows that the switching to hidden states can be controlled already on the fs timescale of the electron dynamics.
Faculty
Faculté des sciences et de médecine
Department
Département de Physique
Language
  • English
Classification
Physics
License
License undefined
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/307515
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