title: Cooperative photoinduced metastable phase control in strained manganite films.
abstract: A major challenge in condensed-matter physics is active control of quantum phases. Dynamic control with pulsed electromagnetic fields can overcome energetic barriers, enabling access to transient or metastable states that are not thermally accessible. Here we demonstrate strain-engineered tuning of La2/3Ca1/3MnO3 into an emergent charge-ordered insulating phase with extreme photo-susceptibility, where even a single optical pulse can initiate a transition to a long-lived metastable hidden metallic phase. Comprehensive single-shot pulsed excitation measurements demonstrate that the transition is cooperative and ultrafast, requiring a critical absorbed photon density to activate local charge excitations that mediate magnetic-lattice coupling that, in turn, stabilize the metallic phase. These results reveal that strain engineering can tune emergent functionality towards proximal macroscopic states to enable dynamic ultrafast optical phase switching and control.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA.|Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
authors.forename: Jingdi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, and High Magnetic Field Laboratory of Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
authors.forename: Xuelian
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA.|Department of Physics, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11790, USA.
authors.forename: Mengkun
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: S W
authors.initials: SW
authors.lastname: Teitelbaum
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA.
authors.forename: K W
authors.initials: KW
authors.lastname: Post
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, and High Magnetic Field Laboratory of Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: K A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Nelson
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA.
authors.forename: D N
authors.initials: DN
authors.lastname: Basov
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, and High Magnetic Field Laboratory of Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.|Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructure, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Wenbin
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA.|Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
authors.forename: R D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Averitt