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Symmetry-protected electronic metastability in an optically driven cuprate ladder

Nature Materials volume 24, pages 1584–1591 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Optically excited quantum materials exhibit non-equilibrium states with remarkable emergent properties, but these phenomena are usually transient, decaying on picosecond timescales and limiting practical applications. Advancing the design and control of non-equilibrium phases requires the development of targeted strategies to achieve long-lived, metastable phases. Here we report the discovery of symmetry-protected electronic metastability in the model cuprate ladder Sr14Cu24O41. Using femtosecond resonant X-ray scattering and spectroscopy, we show that this metastability is driven by a transfer of holes from chain-like charge reservoirs into the ladders. This ultrafast charge redistribution arises from the optical dressing and activation of a hopping pathway that is forbidden by symmetry at equilibrium. Relaxation back to the ground state is, hence, suppressed after the pump coherence dissipates. Our findings highlight how dressing materials with electromagnetic fields can dynamically activate terms in the electronic Hamiltonian, and provide a rational design strategy for non-equilibrium phases of matter.

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Fig. 1: Structure and electronic phases of Sr14Cu24O41.
Fig. 2: Observation of light-induced metastability.
Fig. 3: Metastable charge order suppression.
Fig. 4: Spectroscopic evidence of metastable chain-to-ladder hole transfer.
Fig. 5: Transient magnetic excitation spectrum and onset of electronic metastability.
Fig. 6: Light-induced activation of a symmetry-forbidden tunnelling pathway.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are present in the article and its Supplementary Information. Source data for figures in the main text are available via Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.28851200.v1. Any additional data are available from the corresponding authors upon request.

Code availability

The codes used for DMRG and CuO6 cluster calculations are available from the corresponding authors upon request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank C. Bernhard, A. Cavalleri, S. Chattopadhyay, R. Comin, E. Demler, M. Eckstein, T. Giamarchi, V. Ilakovac and S. Johnston for insightful discussions. Experimental part of this work was primarily supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Early Career Award Program, under award no. DE-SC0022883. Theoretical part of the work (L.X., Z.S. and Yao Wang) was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program under grant no. FA9550-23-1-0153. Work performed at Brookhaven National Laboratory was supported by the US Department of Energy, Division of Materials Science, under contract no. DE-SC0012704. B. Lee and H.J. were supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (MSIT), grant nos. 2022M3H4A1A04074153 and 2020M3H4A2084417. M.C. acknowledges support from the European Union (ERC, DELIGHT, 101052708). We acknowledge the Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen, Switzerland, for the provision of beamtime at the Furka beamline of the SwissFEL. The work at PAL-XFEL was performed at the RSXS endstation (proposal no. 2023-1st-SSS-002), funded by the Korean government (MSIT). The single-crystal growth work was performed at the Pennsylvania State University Two-Dimensional Crystal Consortium—Materials Innovation Platform (2DCC-MIP), which is supported by NSF Cooperative Agreement no. DMR-2039351. J.D.E. and M.C. are supported by The Royal Society, grant no. IES/R3/223185. We acknowledge computational resources from ARCHER2 UK National Computing Service, which was granted via HPC-CONEXS, the UK High-End Computing Consortium (EPSRC grant no. EP/X035514/1). The simulation used resources of the Frontera computing system at the Texas Advanced Computing Center.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Hari Padma, Filippo Glerean, Sophia F. R. TenHuisen & Matteo Mitrano

  2. Department of Applied Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Sophia F. R. TenHuisen

  3. Department of Chemistry, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Zecheng Shen, Luogen Xu & Yao Wang

  4. Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Haoxin Wang

  5. Diamond Light Source, Didcot, UK

    Joshua D. Elliott

  6. National Synchrotron Light Source II, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA

    Christopher C. Homes

  7. PSI Center for Photon Science, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland

    Elizabeth Skoropata, Hiroki Ueda, Biaolong Liu, Eugenio Paris, Arnau Romaguera & Elia Razzoli

  8. Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, Korea

    Byungjune Lee

  9. Max Planck POSTECH/Korea Research Initiative, Center for Complex Phase Materials, Pohang, Korea

    Byungjune Lee

  10. Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA

    Wei He & Mark P. M. Dean

  11. Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Yu Wang, Seng Huat Lee & Zhiqiang Mao

  12. 2D Crystal Consortium, Materials Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Yu Wang, Seng Huat Lee & Zhiqiang Mao

  13. Pohang Accelerator Laboratory (PAL), Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, South Korea

    Hyeongi Choi, Sang-Youn Park & Hoyoung Jang

  14. Department of Physics, University of Trento, Povo, Italy

    Matteo Calandra

Authors
  1. Hari Padma
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  2. Filippo Glerean
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Contributions

H.P. and M.M. conceived the project. M.M. supervised the project. H.P. and F.G. conducted the time-resolved time-domain THz spectroscopy measurements. C.C.H. performed the equilibrium optical spectroscopy measurements. H.P., S.F.R.T., M.P.M.D., M.M., E.S., H.U., B. Liu, E.P., A.R. and E.R. conducted the Cu L3-edge trXAS and trRIXS measurements. H.P., S.F.R.T., B. Lee, H.C., S.-Y.P. and H.J. conducted the O K-edge trXAS and trXRD measurements. Yu Wang, S.H.L. and Z.M. synthesized the samples. H.P., W.H. and S.F.R.T. prepared and precharacterized the samples. Yao Wang developed the theoretical model for the light-activated hopping mechanism. Z.S. and H.W. performed the DMRG calculations and L.X. performed the ab initio simulations under the supervision of Yao Wang. J.D.E. and M.C. performed the DFT calculations. H.P. analysed the data. H.P., Yao Wang and M.M. wrote the paper with input from all authors.

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Correspondence to Hari Padma, Yao Wang or Matteo Mitrano.

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Padma, H., Glerean, F., TenHuisen, S.F.R. et al. Symmetry-protected electronic metastability in an optically driven cuprate ladder. Nat. Mater. 24, 1584–1591 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-025-02254-2

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