Ultrafast Photoinduced Formation of Metallic State in a Perovskite-type Manganite with Short Range Charge and Orbital Order

Femtosecond reflection spectroscopy was performed on a perovskite-type manganite, Gd0.55Sr0.45MnO3, with the short-range charge and orbital order (CO/OO). Immediately after the photoirradiation, a large increase of the reflectivity was detected in the mid-infrared region. The optical conductivity spectrum under photoirradiation obtained from the Kramers-Kronig analyses of the reflectivity changes demonstrates a formation of a metallic state. This suggests that ferromagnetic spin arrangements occur within the time resolution (ca. 200 fs) through the double exchange interaction, resulting in an ultrafast CO/OO to FM switching.Comment: 4 figure

Dominant role of charge ordering on high harmonic generation in Pr_{0.6}Ca_{0.4}MnO_{3}

High-harmonic generation (HHG) is a typical high-order nonlinear optical phenomenon and can be used to probe electronic structures of solids. Here, we investigate the temperature dependence of HHG from Pr_{0.6}Ca_{0.4}MnO_{3} in the range of 7 K to 294 K including the charge ordering (CO) transition and magnetic transition temperatures. The high-harmonic intensity remains almost constant in the high-temperature charge-disordered phase. However, as the temperature is lowered, it starts to gradually increase near the CO transition temperature where an optical gap related to the CO phase appears. The anomalous gap energy dependence resembles the one recently reported in a Mott insulator. We attribute the HHG suppression at high temperatures to the destructive interference among high-harmonic emissions from thermally activated multiple CO configurations. Our results suggest that HHG is a promising tool for probing the fluctuation of local order in strongly correlated systems.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure

Optical conductivity in doped manganites with planar x2^2-y2^2 orbital order

We investigate a planar model for the ferromagnetic (FM) phase of manganites, which develops orbital order of $e_g$ electrons with x$^2$-y$^2$-symmetry at low temperature. The dynamic structure factor of orbital excitations and the optical conductivity $\sigma(\omega)$ are studied with help of a finite-temperature diagonalization method. Our calculations provide a theoretical prediction for $\sigma(\omega)$ for the 2D FM state and are of possible relevance for the recently found A-type phase of manganites at high doping which consists of FM layers coupled antiferromagnetically. In the x$^2$-y$^2$ ordered regime $\sigma(\omega)$ shows both a Drude peak and a gapped incoherent absorption due to a gap in the orbital excitations.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Cooperative Jahn-Teller Effect and Electron-Phonon Coupling in La1−xAxMnO3La_{1-x}A_xMnO_3

A classical model for the lattice distortions of \lax is derived and, in a mean field approximation, solved. The model is based on previous work by Kanamori and involves localized Mn d-electrons (which induce tetragonal distortions of the oxygen octahedra surrounding the Mn) and localized holes (which induce breathing distortions). Parameters are determined by fitting to the room temperature structure of $LaMnO_3$. The energy gained by formation of a local lattice distortion is found to be large, most likely $\approx 0.6$ eV per site, implying a strong electorn-phonon coupling and supporting polaronic models of transport in the doped materials. The structural transition is shown to be of the order-disorder type; the rapid x-dependence of the transition temperature is argued to occur because added holes produce a "random" field which misaligns the nearby sites.Comment: 24 pages. No figures. One Table. Late

Incoherent Charge Dynamics in Perovskite Manganese Oxides

A minimal model is proposed for the perovskite manganese oxides showing the strongly incoherent charge dynamics with a suppressed Drude weight in the ferromagnetic and metallic phase near the insulator. We investigate a generalized double-exchange model including three elements; the orbital degeneracy of $e_g$ conduction bands, the Coulomb interaction and fluctuating Jahn-Teller distortions. We demonstrate that Lancz$\ddot{\rm o}$s diagonalization calculations combined with Monte Carlo sampling of the largely fluctuating lattice distortions result in the optical conductivity which quantitatively accounts for the experimental indications. It is found that all the three elements are indispensable to understand the charge dynamics in these compounds.Comment: 4 pages with 1 page of figures. To appear in J. Phys. Soc. Jp

Magnetic Field resulting from non-linear electrical transport in single crystals of charge-ordered Pr0.63_{0.63} Ca0.37_{0.37} MnO3_{3}}

In this letter we report that the current induced destabilization of the charge ordered (CO) state in a rare-earth manganite gives rise to regions with ferromagnetic correlation. We did this experiment by measurement of the I-V curves in single crystal of the CO system Pr$_{0.63}$Ca$_{0.37}$MnO$_{3}$ and simultanously measuring the magnetization of the current carrying conductor using a high T$_c$ SQUID working at T = 77K. We have found that the current induced destabilization of the CO state leads to a regime of negative differential resistance which leads to a small enhancement of the magnetization of the sample, indicating ferromagnetically aligned moments.Comment: 4 pages LateX, 4 eps figure

Static and Dynamical Properties of the Ferromagnetic Kondo Model with Direct Antiferromagnetic Coupling Between the localized t2gt_{2g} Electrons

The phase diagram of the Kondo lattice Hamiltonian with ferromagnetic Hund's coupling in the limit where the spin of the localized $t_{2g}$ electrons is classical is analyzed in one dimension as a function of temperature, electronic density, and a direct antiferromagnetic coupling $J'$ between the localized spins. Studying static and dynamical properties, a behavior that qualitatively resembles experimental results for manganites occurs for $J'$ smaller than 0.11 in units of the $e_g$ hopping amplitude. In particular a coexistence of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic excitations is observed at low-hole density in agreement with neutron scattering experiments on $\rm{La_{2-2x}Sr_{1+2x}Mn_2O_7}$ with$x=0.4$. This effect is caused by the recently reported tendency to phase separation between hole-rich ferromagnetic and hole-undoped antiferromagnetic domains in electronic models for manganites. As $J'$ increases metal-insulator transitions are detected by monitoring the optical conductivity and the density of states. The magnetic correlations reveal the existence of spiral phases without long-range order but with fairly large correlation lengths. Indications of charge ordering effects appear in the analysis of charge correlations.Comment: 14 pages with 25 eps figures embeded in the tex

Direct evidence of electronic ferroelectricity in YbFe2O4 using neutron diffraction and nonlinear spectroscopy

We report the first observation of room temperature spontaneous electric polarization in an electronic ferroelectric material, a YbFe2O4 single crystal. The observation was based on second harmonic generation (SHG), a nonlinear optical process. Tensor analysis of the SHG signal revealed that this material has a polar charge superstructure with Cm symmetry. This result settles the long-term discussion on the uncertainty about electronic ferroelectric properties, including the charge order structure. We present a complete picture of the polar charge ordering of this material via consistent results from two different characterization methods. The SHG signal shows the same temperature dependence as the superlattice signal observed in neutron diffraction experiments. These results prove ferroelectric coupling to electron ordering in YbFe2O4, which results in electronic ferroelectricity which is enabled by the real space ordering of iron cations with different valences. The existence of electronic ferroelectricity holds promise for future electronics technologies where devices run a thousand times faster than frequency of the present CPU (a few gigahertz) embedded in smartphones, etc

Spin/Orbital Pattern-Dependent Polaron Absorption in Nd(1-x)Sr(x)MnO3

We investigated optical properties of Nd(1-x)Sr(x)MnO3 (x= 0.40, 0.50, 0.55, and 0.65) single crystals. In the spin/orbital disordered state, their conductivity spectra look quite similar, and the strength of the mid-infrared absorption peak is proportional to x(1-x) consistent with the polaron picture. As temperature lowers, the Nd(1-x)Sr(x)MnO3 samples enter into various spin/orbital ordered states, whose optical responses are quite different. These optical responses can be explained by the spin/orbital ordering pattern-dependent polaron hopping.Comment: 3 figures (gzipped