Abstract
The quench dynamics of a system involving two competing orders is investigated using a Ginzburg-Landau theory with relaxational dynamics. We consider the scenario where a pump rapidly heats the system to a high temperature, after which the system cools down to its equilibrium temperature. We study the evolution of the order parameter amplitude and fluctuations in the resulting time-dependent free-energy landscape. Exponentially growing thermal fluctuations dominate the dynamics. The system typically evolves into the phase associated with the faster-relaxing order parameter, even if it is not the global free-energy minimum. This theory offers a natural explanation for the widespread experimental observation that metastable states may be induced by laser-induced collapse of a dominant equilibrium order parameter.
- Received 2 June 2019
- Revised 27 December 2019
- Accepted 17 March 2020
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.10.021028
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Erratum
Erratum: Transient Trapping into Metastable States in Systems with Competing Orders [Phys. Rev. X 10, 021028 (2020)]
Zhiyuan Sun and Andrew J. Millis
Phys. Rev. X 12, 029901 (2022)
Popular Summary
If a system is pushed far away from its natural equilibrium state, does it relax back to its starting point or to a metastable state analogous to supercooled water? We show that differences in order-parameter dynamics can control the phase to which the system is driven, potentially enabling researchers to create new materials with properties (for example, superconductivity) that do not exist in equilibrium.
Specifically, we consider systems with competing orders. These are systems in which two or more behaviors (such as superconductivity and charge-density waves) coexist and compete. In our mathematical analysis, we find that after such systems are strongly driven away from their equilibrium, exponentially amplified thermal fluctuations may drive them into a metastable phase corresponding to the order with the faster relaxation time.
Our work demonstrates the importance of competing timescales in systems with multiple order parameters and provides a theoretical basis for interpreting a wide variety of pump-probe experiments in condensed-matter physics and materials science.
