Laser-induced quenching of metastability at the Mott-insulator to metal transition
arxiv(2024)
摘要
There is growing interest in strongly correlated insulator thin films because
the intricate interplay of their intrinsic and extrinsic state variables causes
memristive behavior that might be used for bio-mimetic devices in the emerging
field of neuromorphic computing. In this study we find that laser irradiation
tends to drive V_2O_3 from supercooled/superheated metastable states
towards thermodynamic equilibrium, most likely in a non-thermal way. We study
thin films of the prototypical Mott-insulator V_2O_3, which show
spontaneous phase separation into metal-insulator herringbone domains during
the Mott transition. Here, we use low-temperature microscopy to investigate how
these metal-insulator domains can be modified by scanning a focused laser beam
across the thin film surface. We find that the response depends on the thermal
history: When the thin film is heated from below the Mott transition
temperature, the laser beam predominantly induces metallic domains. On the
contrary, when the thin film is cooled from a temperature above the transition,
the laser beam predominantly induces insulating domains. Very likely, the
V_2O_3 thin film is in a superheated or supercooled state, respectively,
during the first-order phase transition, and the perturbation by a laser beam
drives these metastable states into stable ones. This way, the thermal history
is locally erased. Our findings are supported by a phenomenological model with
a laser-induced lowering of the energy barrier between the metastable and
equilibrium states.
更多查看译文
AI 理解论文
溯源树
样例
生成溯源树,研究论文发展脉络
Chat Paper
正在生成论文摘要