Beyond the molecular movie: Dynamics of bands and bonds during a photoinduced phase transition
Beyond the molecular movie: Dynamics of bands and bonds during a photoinduced phase transition
Ultrafast nonequilibrium dynamics offer a route to study the microscopic interactions that govern macroscopic behavior. In particular, photoinduced phase transitions (PIPTs) in solids provide a test case for how forces, and the resulting atomic motion along a reaction coordinate, originate from a nonequilibrium population of excited electronic states. Using femtosecond …