Structural origin of 'hidden state' in manganite thin film revealed by picosecond time-resolved X-ray diffraction
Thursday, July 14, 2011 - 08:30
in Physics & Chemistry
Photo-induced phase transition (PIPT) has caused great excitement in materials science because ultra-fast alteration of the magnetic, dielectric, structural and optical properties of materials can be brought about with very weak photonic excitation as a result of cooperative interactions. An essential question that arises is how we can identify a novel phase of solid that is uniquely generated under photo-excited conditions. Such a novel phase is often referred to as a 'hidden state'. Despite intensive efforts to identify the structures of hidden states in various systems, few cases have been explored so far because of the technical difficulty of studying the transient lattice structure of solids.