New, 'Hidden' State of Matter Coaxed into Being by Ultrafast Laser Flashes

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The new phase appears for a brief moment after the flash of light.

An illustration shows how laser light (represented by the glowing orbs) hits a charge density wave, it changes the wave's behavior.
An illustration shows how laser light (represented by the glowing orbs) hits a charge density wave, it changes the wave's behavior. (Image credit: Alfred Zong)

A new phase of matter has been discovered hiding inside a crystal, after physicists blasted the crystal with ultrashort pulses of laser light.

The fleeting new phase of matter appeared in a crystalline material called lanthanum tritelluride — composed of one lanthanum atom and three tellurium atoms. The super short laser pulses changed how electrons moved through the crystal, and the change is enough to classify it as an all-new state of matter. 

Lanthanum tritelluride crystals naturally form a layered structure, the physicists said. And within that layered structure you'll find an unusual pattern.

But hit the crystal with a flash of laser light less than a trillionth of a second long, and the charge density wave will sharply (and very briefly) switch directions — flowing perpendicular to the direction in which it originally flowed. That's the new phase of matter the physicists found.

In theory, the new phase of matter that appears after the laser flash exists as a sort of latent possibility in the crystal all the time. The laser light suppresses the dominant phase — that original flow of electrical charge — and allows the hidden phase to emerge. 

When the effect of the laser subsides, the original phase re-asserts itself. The researchers called the two phases "competing states" in the crystal.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Rafi Letzter
Rafi Letzter
Staff Writer
Rafi joined Live Science in 2017. He has a bachelor's degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of journalism. You can find his past science reporting at Inverse, Business Insider and Popular Science, and his past photojournalism on the Flash90 wire service and in the pages of The Courier Post of southern New Jersey.