Self-amplified photo-induced gap quenching in a correlated electron material
Name
Self-amplified.pdf
Size
964.9 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
bc43c7c5adc57811a14c564234202672
Author(s)
Mathias, S.
Eich, S.
Urbancic, J.
Michael, S.
Carr, A. V.
Emmerich, S.
Stange, A.
Popmintchev, T.
Wiesenmayer, M.
Ruffing, A.
Date Issued
October 2016
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Mathias, S. et al. “Self-Amplified Photo-Induced Gap Quenching in a Correlated Electron Material.” Nature Communications 7 (2016): 12902. © 2016 Macmillan Publishers Limited
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Capturing the dynamic electronic band structure of a correlated material presents a powerful capability for uncovering the complex couplings between the electronic and structural degrees of freedom. When combined with ultrafast laser excitation, new phases of matter can result, since far-from-equilibrium excited states are instantaneously populated. Here, we elucidate a general relation between ultrafast non-equilibrium electron dynamics and the size of the characteristic energy gap in a correlated electron material. We show that carrier multiplication via impact ionization can be one of the most important processes in a gapped material, and that the speed of carrier multiplication critically depends on the size of the energy gap. In the case of the charge-density wave material 1T-TiSe[subscript 2], our data indicate that carrier multiplication and gap dynamics mutually amplify each other, which explains—on a microscopic level—the extremely fast response of this material to ultrafast optical excitation.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12902
