Light-induced phase transitions in vanadium dioxide: a tensor network study

Nonequilibrium phase transitions driven by light pulses represent a rapidly developing field in condensed matter physics. As one of the archetypal strongly correlated materials, vanadium dioxide (VO2) undergoes a structural phase transition (SPT) from a monoclinic (M1) to rutile (R) structure and an insulator-to-metal transition (IMT) either when heated above 340 K or when excited by an ultrafast laser pulse. Here, we present a tensor network study of the light-induced phase transitions in VO2 based on a quasi-one-dimensional model with all the important ingredients – multi-orbital character, electron-lattice coupling, and electron-electron correlations – being included. We show that this model qualitatively captures the equilibrium properties of VO2 by calculating the ground state phase diagram and finite-temperature phase transitions. A hybrid quantum-classical tensor-network method is used to simulate the dynamics following photoexcitation. We find that the structure can transform faster than the harmonic phonon modes of M1 phase, suggesting lattice nonlinearity is key in the SPT. We also find separate timescales for the evolution of dimerization and tilt distortions in the lattice dynamics, as well as the loss and subsequent partial restoration behavior of the displacements, which can provide an explanation for the complex dynamics observed in recent experiments [C. Brahms et al., arXiv:XXXX.XXXXX]. Moreover, decoupled SPT and IMT dynamics are observed in the numerical simulations: while the initial M1 structure transforms to the R one in tens of femtoseconds, the IMT occurs quasi-instantaneously, consistent with recent experimental findings. Our theoretical studies provide insight into the light-induced phase transitions of VO2, revealing unexpected non-monotonic transformation pathways and paving the way for future studies of non-thermal phase transformations.