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  • Charge Density Wave Melting...
    Chávez-Cervantes, M; Topp, G E; Aeschlimann, S; Krause, R; Sato, S A; Sentef, M A; Gierz, I

    Physical review letters, 07/2019, Volume: 123, Issue: 3
    Journal Article

    Charge density waves (CDWs) are symmetry-broken ground states that commonly occur in low-dimensional metals due to strong electron-electron and/or electron-phonon coupling. The nonequilibrium carrier distribution established via photodoping with femtosecond laser pulses readily quenches these ground states and induces an ultrafast insulator-to-metal phase transition. To date, CDW melting has been mainly investigated in the single-photon regime with pump photon energies bigger than the gap size. The recent development of strong-field midinfrared sources now enables the investigation of CDW dynamics following subgap excitation. Here we excite prototypical one-dimensional indium wires with a CDW gap of ∼300  meV with midinfrared pulses at ℏω=190  meV with MV/cm field strength and probe the transient electronic structure with time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. We find that the CDW gap is filled on a timescale short compared to our temporal resolution of 300 fs and that the band structure changes are completed within ∼1  ps. Supported by a minimal theoretical model we attribute our findings to multiphoton absorption across the CDW gap.