Decoupled few-femtosecond phase transitions in vanadium dioxide.

ABSTRACT: The nature of the insulator-to-metal phase transition in vanadium dioxide (VO₂) is one of the longest-standing problems in condensed-matter physics. Ultrafast spectroscopy has long promised to determine whether the transition is primarily driven by the electronic or structural degree of freedom, but measurements to date have been stymied by their sensitivity to only one of these components and/or their limited temporal resolution. Here we use ultra-broadband few-femtosecond pump-probe spectroscopy to resolve the electronic and structural phase transitions in VO₂ at their fundamental time scales. Our experiments show that the system transforms into a bad-metallic phase within 10 fs after photoexcitation, but requires another 100 fs to complete the transition, during wh

SUBMITTER: Brahms C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12009403 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature