Inside a crystal, tiny electrical regions can point in different directions or line up in an organized pattern. Cooling helps bring them into alignment, but physicists at Auburn University have now shown that brief flashes of laser light can also produce order at warmer temperatures, where those regions would otherwise remain disorganized.
The team worked with single crystals of a modified form of strontium titanate. The material allows electrons to move through it while also containing tiny regions with distinct positive and negative sides, an unusual combination of electrical properties. These regions are known as polar nanoregions.
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