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Article
Controlling competing orders via nonequilibrium acoustic phonons: Emergence of anisotropic effective electronic temperature
Physical Review B
  • Michael Schütt, University of Minnesota
  • Peter Orth, Iowa State University
  • Alex Levchenko, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Rafael M. Fernandes, University of Minnesota
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
1-15-2018
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevB.97.035135
Abstract

Ultrafast perturbations offer a unique tool to manipulate correlated systems due to their ability to promote transient behaviors with no equilibrium counterpart. A widely employed strategy is the excitation of coherent optical phonons, as they can cause significant changes in the electronic structure and interactions on short time scales. One of the issues, however, is the inevitable heating that accompanies these resonant excitations. Here, we explore a promising alternative route: the nonequilibrium excitation of acoustic phonons, which, due to their low excitation energies, generally lead to less heating. We demonstrate that driving acoustic phonons leads to the remarkable phenomenon of a momentum-dependent effective temperature, by which electronic states at different regions of the Fermi surface are subject to distinct local temperatures. Such an anisotropic effective electronic temperature can have a profound effect on the delicate balance between competing ordered states in unconventional superconductors, opening a so far unexplored avenue to control correlated phases.

Comments

This article is published as Schütt, Michael, Peter P. Orth, Alex Levchenko, and Rafael M. Fernandes. "Controlling competing orders via nonequilibrium acoustic phonons: Emergence of anisotropic effective electronic temperature." Physical Review B 97, no. 3 (2018): 035135. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.97.035135. Posted with permission.

Copyright Owner
American Physical Society
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Citation Information
Michael Schütt, Peter Orth, Alex Levchenko and Rafael M. Fernandes. "Controlling competing orders via nonequilibrium acoustic phonons: Emergence of anisotropic effective electronic temperature" Physical Review B Vol. 97 (2018) p. 035135
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/peter-orth/9/