New, 'Hidden' State of Matter Coaxed into Being by Ultrafast Laser Flashes
By Rafi Letzter - Staff Writer a day ago Space
The new phase appears for a brief moment after the flash of light.
An illustration shows how laser light (represented by the glowing orbs) hits a charge density wave, it changes the wave's behavior.
(Image: © Alfred Zong)
A new phase of matter has been discovered hiding inside a crystal, after physicists blasted the crystal with ultrashort pulses of laser light.
The fleeting new phase of matter appeared in a crystalline material called lanthanum tritelluride — composed of one lanthanum atom and three tellurium atoms. The super short laser pulses changed how electrons moved through the crystal, and the change is enough to classify it as an all-new state of matter.
Bursts of energy usually make substances less orderly, like heat melting ice or a sharp crack shattering glass, the physicists said. But in this case, the laser flash seems to move the crystal into a rare, higher-order state.
"Normally, to change the phase of a material you try chemical changes, or pressure, or magnetic fields. In this work, we are using light to make these changes," Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) physicist Nuh Gedik, one of the leaders of the experiment, said in a statement,.
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https://www.livescience.com/laser-flash-crystal-new-phase-matter.html
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