Dynamical reordering of charge stripes in driven by electron beam irradiation

¹ Department of Materials Science, CIAS, Osaka Prefecture University - Osaka, Japan
² Center for Condensed Matter Sciences and Department of Physics National Taiwan University - Taipei 106, Taiwan, ROC
³ Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences and Institute of Physics Academia Sinica - Taipei 106, Taiwan, ROC
⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA

Corresponding author: chchen35@ntu.edu.tw

Received: 7 January 2005
Accepted: 18 March 2005

Abstract

Under the irradiation of a high-energy electron beam in a transmission electron microscope, we find that the charge ordering in is first destroyed and then dynamically reordered with a further increase of the electron beam intensity. This electron beam-induced melting and re-entrant behavior of charge ordering are found to be a reversible process as a function of the beam intensity. The non-equilibrium behaviors occur as a result of the dynamical reordering as the external drive intensifies. Our finding resembles the dynamics of driven elastic media in the presence of quenched disorder and an external applied drive such as the dynamic reordering of a vortex lattice driven by an external electric current. The energetics of the electron beam-induced effect is also discussed in the framework of the lifetime of the charge disordered clusters induced by the external irradiation.