Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 155702 (2009) [4 pages]Ultrafast Structural Phase Transition Driven by Photoinduced Melting of Charge and Orbital OrderReceived 7 July 2009; revised 14 September 2009; published 9 October 2009 We use femtosecond x-ray diffraction to probe directly the structural dynamics of a charge ordered and orbitally ordered thin film of La0.42Ca0.58MnO3 initiated by an ultrafast optical pulse. At low excitation fluences we observe the displacive excitation of a coherent optical Ag phonon. Under high excitation conditions we observe a complete phase transition within 1 ps via the disappearance of a superlattice reflection. The initial step of the phase transition occurs on a time scale significantly faster than the 200 fs time resolution of our experiment. © 2009 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.155702
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.155702
PACS:
64.60.A−, 61.05.cp, 71.27.+a, 78.47.J−
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