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Abstract:
One-dimensional indium wires grown on Si(111) substrates, which are metallic at high temperatures, become insulating below ∼100 K due to the formation of a charge density wave (CDW). The physics of this transition is not conventional and involves a multiband Peierls instability with strong interband coupling. This CDW ground state is readily destroyed with femtosecond laser pulses resulting in a light-induced insulator-to-metal phase transition. The current understanding of this transition remains incomplete, requiring measurements of the transient electronic structure to complement previous investigations of the lattice dynamics. Time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy with extreme ultraviolet radiation is applied to this end. We find that the transition from the insulating to the metallic band structure occurs within ∼660 fs, which is a fraction of the amplitude mode period. The long lifetime of the transient state (>100 ps) is attributed to trapping in a metastable state in accordance with previous work.
