Journal article
Photo-induced high-temperature ferromagnetism in YTiO3
- Abstract:
- In quantum materials, degeneracies and frustrated interactions can have a profound impact on the emergence of long-range order, often driving strong fluctuations that suppress functionally relevant electronic or magnetic phases1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Engineering the atomic structure in the bulk or at heterointerfaces has been an important research strategy to lift these degeneracies, but these equilibrium methods are limited by thermodynamic, elastic and chemical constraints8. Here we show that all-optical, mode-selective manipulation of the crystal lattice can be used to enhance and stabilize high-temperature ferromagnetism in YTiO3, a material that shows only partial orbital polarization, an unsaturated low-temperature magnetic moment and a suppressed Curie temperature, Tc = 27 K (refs. 9,10,11,12,13). The enhancement is largest when exciting a 9 THz oxygen rotation mode, for which complete magnetic saturation is achieved at low temperatures and transient ferromagnetism is realized up to Tneq > 80 K, nearly three times the thermodynamic transition temperature. We interpret these effects as a consequence of the light-induced dynamical changes to the quasi-degenerate Ti t2g orbitals, which affect the magnetic phase competition and fluctuations found in the equilibrium state14,15,16,17,18,19,20. Notably, the light-induced high-temperature ferromagnetism discovered in our work is metastable over many nanoseconds, underscoring the ability to dynamically engineer practically useful non-equilibrium functionalities.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 12.5MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41586-023-05853-8
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature More from this journal
- Volume:
- 617
- Issue:
- 7959
- Pages:
- 73-78
- Publication date:
- 2023-05-03
- Acceptance date:
- 2023-02-16
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1476-4687
- ISSN:
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0028-0836
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1339816
- Local pid:
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pubs:1339816
- Deposit date:
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2023-05-04
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Disa et al
- Copyright date:
- 2023
- Rights statement:
- © 2023 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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