Cooperative photoinduced metastable phase control in strained manganite films

Strain engineering can ‘hide’ the ordinal ferrometallic state in manganite films, pushing the system to a metastable state, which can then be controlled through photoexcitation. A major challenge in condensed-matter physics is active control of quantum phases 1 , 2 . Dynamic control with pulsed electromagnetic fields can overcome energetic barriers, enabling access to transient or metastable states that are not thermally accessible 3 , 4 , 5 . Here we demonstrate strain-engineered tuning of La 2/3 Ca 1/3 MnO 3 into an emergent charge-ordered insulating phase with extreme photo-susceptibility, where even a single optical pulse can initiate a transition to a long-lived metastable hidden metallic phase. Comprehensive single-shot pulsed excitation measurements demonstrate that the transition is cooperative and ultrafast, requiring a critical absorbed photon density to activate local charge excitations that mediate magnetic–lattice coupling that, in turn, stabilize the metallic phase. These results reveal that strain engineering can tune emergent functionality towards proximal macroscopic states to enable dynamic ultrafast optical phase switching and control.