Unexpected Intermediate State Photoinduced in the Metal-Insulator Transition of Submicrometer Phase-Separated Manganites

At ultrafast timescales, the initial and final states of a first-order metal-insulator transition often coexist forming clusters of the two phases. Here, we report an unexpected third long-lived intermediate state emerging at the photoinduced first-order metal-insulator transition of La_{0.325}Pr_{0...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2018-06, Vol.120 (26), p.267202-267202, Article 267202
Main Authors: Lin, Hanxuan, Liu, Hao, Lin, Lingfang, Dong, Shuai, Chen, Hongyan, Bai, Yu, Miao, Tian, Yu, Yang, Yu, Weichao, Tang, Jing, Zhu, Yinyan, Kou, Yunfang, Niu, Jiebin, Cheng, Zhaohua, Xiao, Jiang, Wang, Wenbin, Dagotto, Elbio, Yin, Lifeng, Shen, Jian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ferromagnetism
Insulators
Kerr magnetooptical effect
Magnetic fields
Magnetic properties
Manganites
Metal-insulator transition
Phase separation
Phase transitions
Physical properties
Time dependence
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Summary:At ultrafast timescales, the initial and final states of a first-order metal-insulator transition often coexist forming clusters of the two phases. Here, we report an unexpected third long-lived intermediate state emerging at the photoinduced first-order metal-insulator transition of La_{0.325}Pr_{0.3}Ca_{0.375}MnO_{3}, known to display submicrometer length-scale phase separation. Using magnetic force microscopy and time-dependent magneto-optical Kerr effect, we determined that the third state is a nanoscale mixture of the competing ferromagnetic metallic and charge-ordered insulating phases, with its own physical properties. This discovery bridges the two different families of colossal magnetoresistant manganites known experimentally and shows for the first time that the associated states predicted by theory can coexist in a single sample.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.120.267202