Abstract
The use of ultrashort optical and X-ray pulses offers new opportunities to study fundamental interactions in materials exhibiting unconventional quantum states, such as stripes, charge density waves and high-temperature superconductivity. To understand the microscopic interdependence between these states a probe capable of discerning their interaction on the natural length and time scales is necessary. In this talk, I will present ultrafast resonant soft x-ray scattering results to track the transient evolution of nanoscale charge density wave correlations in the high temperature superconductor, YBa2Cu3O6+x. Ultrashort infrared pulses produce a non-thermal quench of the superconducting state while X-ray pulses detect the reaction of charge density waves. We observe a picosecond response, characterized by a large enhancement of spatial coherence of charge density waves, nearly doubling their correlation length, and a smaller increase of their amplitude. This ultrafast snapshot directly reveals the interaction between these quantum states on their natural timescales. It demonstrates that their competition manifests inhomogeneously, as disruption of nanoscale spatial coherence, indicating the role of superconductivity in stabilizing topological defects within charge density waves domains.
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