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Letter

Nature Materials 6, 643–647 (1 September 2007) | doi:10.1038/nmat1979

Coherent orbital waves in the photo-induced insulator|[ndash]|metal dynamics of|[nbsp]|a magnetoresistive manganite

D. Polli , M. Rini , S. Wall , R. W. Schoenlein , Y. Tomioka , Y. Tokura , G. Cerullo & A. Cavalleri

Photo-excitation can drive strongly correlated electron insulators into competing conducting phases, resulting in giant and ultrafast changes of their electronic and magnetic properties. The underlying non-equilibrium dynamics involve many degrees of freedom at once, whereby sufficiently short optical pulses can trigger the corresponding collective modes of the solid along temporally coherent pathways.