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Overcoming the thermal regime for the electric-field driven Mott transition in vanadium sesquioxide.

  • Giorgianni F Laboratory for Non-linear Optics, Paul Scherrer Institute, 5232, Villigen, Switzerland. flavio.giorgianni@psi.ch.
  • Sakai J GREMAN, UMR 7347 CNRS and Université François Rabelais de Tours, Parc de Grandmont, 37200, Tours, France.
  • Lupi S INFN and Department of Physics, University of Rome La Sapienza, P.Le A. Moro 2, 00185, Rome, Italy.
  • 2019-03-13
Published in:
  • Nature communications. - 2019
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
General Physics and Astronomy
General Chemistry
English The complex interplay among electronic, magnetic and lattice degrees of freedom in Mott-Hubbard materials leads to different types of insulator-to-metal transitions (IMT) which can be triggered by temperature, pressure, light irradiation and electric field. However, several questions remain open concerning the quantum or thermal nature of electric field-driven transition process. Here, using intense terahertz pulses, we reveal the emergence of an instantaneous purely-electronic IMT in the Mott-Hubbard vanadium sequioxide (V2O3) prototype material. While fast electronics allow thermal-driven transition involving Joule heating, which takes place after tens of picoseconds, terahertz electric field is able to induce a sub-picosecond electronic switching. We provide a comprehensive study of the THz induced Mott transition, showing a crossover from a fast quantum dynamics to a slower thermal dissipative evolution for increasing temperature. Strong-field terahertz-driven electronic transition paves the way to ultrafast electronic switches and high-harmonic generation in correlated systems.
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  • English
Open access status
gold
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https://sonar.ch/global/documents/997
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