The ferroelectric photo ground state of SrTiO3: Cavity materials engineering

Optical cavities confine light on a small region in space, which can result in a strong coupling of light with materials inside the cavity. This gives rise to new states where quantum fluctuations of light and matter can alter the properties of the material altogether. Here we demonstrate, based on...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Latini, Simone, Shin, Dongbin, Sato, Shunsuke A., Schäfer, Christian, De Giovannini, Umberto, Hübener, Hannes, Rubio Secades, Angel
Tipo de documento: artigo
Data de publicação:2021
País:España
Recursos:Universidad del País Vasco
Repositório:Addi. Archivo Digital para la Docencia y la Investigación
OAI Identifier:oai:addi.ehu.eus:10810/53496
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/10810/53496
Access Level:Acceso aberto
Palavra-chave:cavity materials engineering
quantum paraelectric to ferroelectric transitions
trong light-matter hybrids
polaritons
SrTiO3
cavity phase diagram
structural phase-transitions
quantum
Descrição
Resumo:Optical cavities confine light on a small region in space, which can result in a strong coupling of light with materials inside the cavity. This gives rise to new states where quantum fluctuations of light and matter can alter the properties of the material altogether. Here we demonstrate, based on first-principles calculations, that such light-matter coupling induces a change of the collective phase from quantum paraelectric to ferroelectric in the SrTiO3 ground state, which has thus far only been achieved in outof-equilibrium strongly excited conditions [X. Li et al., Science 364, 1079-1082 (2019) and T. F. Nova, A. S. Disa, M. Fechner, A. Cavalleri, Science 364, 1075-1079 (2019)]. This is a light-matter hybrid ground state which can only exist because of the coupling to the vacuum fluctuations of light, a photo ground state. The phase transition is accompanied by changes in the crystal structure, showing that fundamental ground state properties of materials can be controlled via strong light-matter coupling. Such a control of quantum states enables the tailoring of materials properties or even the design of novel materials purely by exposing them to confined light.