Fig. 4: Dynamics of the IC spot profile and simulation results.
From: Light-induced hexatic state in a layered quantum material
a, Azimuthal (brown) and radial (blue) IC spot widths (full-width at half-maximum) extracted from the in-plane data shown in Fig. 3b (see brown and blue arrows at 10 ps delay) and out-of-plane IC spot widths (red) derived from the reconstructed rocking curves shown in Fig. 3c. All curves approach the NC equilibrium spot widths at late delay times (dashed grey lines) when the structural correlation length exceeds the reciprocal space resolution in the experiments. The depicted data points and error bars represent the results and the corresponding 68% confidence intervals from the fitting of the spot profile as described in Fig. 3. Solid lines represent the corresponding temporal evolution of the spot widths in the simulation corrected for the instrument resolution (Methods). b, The left axis shows the temporal evolution of the ratio between azimuthal and radial spot width (blue). The right axis shows the dynamics of the CDW wave number |qIC| extracted from the fits in Fig. 3b (black). Similar to a, the depicted values and error bars are the results of fits to the temporal evolution of the spot profile. c, The left axis shows the density of CDW phase vortices in the simulation (black). The right axis shows the temporal evolution of the simulated CDW intensity (red). d, The left axis shows the simulated energy per phase vortex for a stack of correlated (red) and uncorrelated (grey) layers. The right axis shows the average flux line length corrected for the influence of the coincidental alignment present at early times (Methods). e, Example simulated diffractograms in a section of reciprocal space as in Fig. 3a. In accordance with the experimental results, we find six azimuthally broadened diffraction spots in the FOLZ at early times, while only three CDW reflections indicative of the three-dimensional CDW are present at late times. f, Simulated phase modulation Im(ϕ3,l) within an individual layer, related to the phase pattern by a Fourier transformation (FT). Note the anisotropic distortions in the vicinity of neighbouring phase singularities that induce the azimuthal broadening in the CDW correlation function for high defect densities. g, Three-dimensional CDW phase modulation Im(ϕ3,l) in 4 of the 51 simulated layers. The stacking sequence favours a local phase shift of 2π/3 between adjacent layers and the alignment of phase vortices into ‘flux lines’ (marked as black circles and diamonds for opposite chirality). The images display the same region as in f.
