Nanoscale-femtosecond dielectric response of Mott insulators captured by two-color near-field ultrafast electron microscopy.
- Fu X School of Physics, Ultrafast Electron Microscopy Laboratory, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, China. xwfu@nankai.edu.cn.
- Barantani F Institute of Physics, Laboratory for Ultrafast Microscopy and Electron Scattering (LUMES), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Station 6, Lausanne, 1015, Switzerland.
- Gargiulo S Institute of Physics, Laboratory for Ultrafast Microscopy and Electron Scattering (LUMES), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Station 6, Lausanne, 1015, Switzerland.
- Madan I Institute of Physics, Laboratory for Ultrafast Microscopy and Electron Scattering (LUMES), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Station 6, Lausanne, 1015, Switzerland.
- Berruto G Institute of Physics, Laboratory for Ultrafast Microscopy and Electron Scattering (LUMES), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Station 6, Lausanne, 1015, Switzerland.
- LaGrange T Institute of Physics, Laboratory for Ultrafast Microscopy and Electron Scattering (LUMES), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Station 6, Lausanne, 1015, Switzerland.
- Jin L Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
- Wu J Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
- Vanacore GM Department of Materials Science, University of Milano-Bicocca, Via Cozzi 55, 20121, Milano, Italy.
- Carbone F Institute of Physics, Laboratory for Ultrafast Microscopy and Electron Scattering (LUMES), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Station 6, Lausanne, 1015, Switzerland. fabrizio.carbone@epfl.ch.
- Zhu Y Condensed Matter Physics and Material Science Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, 11973, USA. zhu@bnl.gov.
- 2020-11-14
Published in:
- Nature communications. - 2020
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
General Physics and Astronomy
General Chemistry
English
Characterizing and controlling the out-of-equilibrium state of nanostructured Mott insulators hold great promises for emerging quantum technologies while providing an exciting playground for investigating fundamental physics of strongly-correlated systems. Here, we use two-color near-field ultrafast electron microscopy to photo-induce the insulator-to-metal transition in a single VO2 nanowire and probe the ensuing electronic dynamics with combined nanometer-femtosecond resolution (10-21 m ∙ s). We take advantage of a femtosecond temporal gating of the electron pulse mediated by an infrared laser pulse, and exploit the sensitivity of inelastic electron-light scattering to changes in the material dielectric function. By spatially mapping the near-field dynamics of an individual nanowire of VO2, we observe that ultrafast photo-doping drives the system into a metallic state on a timescale of ~150 fs without yet perturbing the crystalline lattice. Due to the high versatility and sensitivity of the electron probe, our method would allow capturing the electronic dynamics of a wide range of nanoscale materials with ultimate spatiotemporal resolution.
- Language
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- English
- Open access status
- gold
- Identifiers
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- DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-19636-6
- PMID 33188192
- Persistent URL
- https://folia.unifr.ch/global/documents/69763
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