Physicists Unlock the Secrets of Light-Induced Ferroelectricity in Quantum Materials

Mid-infrared light reduces the fluctuations of octahedral rotations in SrTiO3, allowing the material to transform into a ferroelectric state by shifting the central titanium ion either up or down. Credit: Jörg Harms, MPSD

Now, a team of researchers of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Germany and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in the United States has performed an experiment at the SwissFEL X-ray Free-Electron Laser to identify the intrinsic interactions relevant to creating this state. The new insight was gained not by detecting the position of the atoms, but by measuring the fluctuations of these atomic positions.

The researchers teamed up with Mariano Trigo’s group at SLAC and combined the mid-infrared excitation with femtosecond X-ray pulses from the SwissFEL free electron laser to shine light on these dynamics, which take place on the sub-picosecond time scale – shorter than a trillionth of a second.

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