Physical Review Research (Apr 2020)

Orbital dynamics during an ultrafast insulator to metal transition

  • Sergii Parchenko,
  • Eugenio Paris,
  • Daniel McNally,
  • Elsa Abreu,
  • Markus Dantz,
  • Elisabeth M. Bothschafter,
  • Alexander H. Reid,
  • William F. Schlotter,
  • Ming-Fu Lin,
  • Scott F. Wandel,
  • Giacomo Coslovich,
  • Sioan Zohar,
  • Georgi L. Dakovski,
  • J. J. Turner,
  • S. Moeller,
  • Yi Tseng,
  • Milan Radovic,
  • Conny Saathe,
  • Marcus Agaaker,
  • Joseph E. Nordgren,
  • Steven L. Johnson,
  • Thorsten Schmitt,
  • Urs Staub

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.023110
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2, no. 2
p. 023110

Abstract

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We present ultrafast resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) experiments performed at the vanadium L edge to track changes in the electronic structure of V_{2}O_{3}, a classical Mott-Hubbard material. The probed orbital excitations within the d shell of the V ion show a sub-ps time response, which evolves at later times to a state that appears electronically indistinguishable from the high-temperature metallic state. For low excitation fluences, a transient recovery or delay is observed, which could be related to a transient dimerization of the V-V bonds. Our results demonstrate the great potential for RIXS spectroscopy to study the ultrafast orbital dynamics in strongly correlated materials.