Mott insulators out-of-equilibrium, insulator to metal transitions and elastic effects

Our research work focuses on a large class of strongly correlated materials, the Mott insulators. We are particularly interested in the properties emerging in these materials when they are brought out of equilibrium, for example via an ultra-fast electrical or light pulse. Such excitations can indeed induce out-of-equilibrium phase transitions, involving both a strong electronic response (insulator to metal transition), but also a lattice response (volume variation). One of the intriguing aspects is that these out-of-equilibrium transitions may only be transient by relaxing after a few nanoseconds, but can also be permanent by locking the material into a new metastable state potentially inaccessible at thermodynamic equilibrium.
In this context, our work aims to understand the mechanisms of hot electron creation, the dynamics of the insulator to metal transition and the associated elastic effects.

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