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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Charge correlations and their photoinduced dynamics in charge-ordered organic ferroelectrics

Hirotake Itoh1,*, Hirokazu Obatake1, Rina Fujiwara1, Yohei Kawakami1, Kaoru Yamamoto2, Martin Dressel3, and Shinichiro Iwai1,†

  • 1Department of Physics, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8578, Japan
  • 2Department of Applied Physics, Okayama University of Science, Okayama 700-0005, Japan
  • 31. Physikalisches Institut, Universität Stuttgart, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany

  • *hiroitoh@tohoku.ac.jp
  • †s-iwai@tohoku.ac.jp
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Phys. Rev. Research 3, L032043 – Published 13 August, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.L032043

Abstract

By employing THz absorption and emission spectroscopy we were able to disentangle long-range charge order with a hundreds micrometer scale and short-range charge fluctuations that occur well above the charge-order phase transition in quasi-one-dimensional organic ferroelectrics, (TMTTF)2X (X=AsF6, PF6, and SbF6). While long-range charge order melts by photoexcitation irrespective of temperature or chemical pressure, short-range fluctuations are actually enhanced close to the charge-order phase boundary for X=AsF6 and PF6. Our findings reveal that short-range fluctuations show various photoresponses depending on both temperature and electronic parameters, providing a design strategy for nonequilibrium states.

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Phys. Rev. Research 3, L032043– Published 13 August, 2021
  • Received 22 October 2020
  • Revised 10 May 2021
  • Accepted 8 July 2021
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