Physicists at Auburn University have discovered how to use brief bursts of laser light to organize tiny electrical regions hidden inside a crystal. Their findings shed new light on a mystery that has puzzled researchers for decades and demonstrate how lasers can influence the material’s electrical behavior. The breakthrough could eventually help scientists explore faster ways to process and store information.
The research was led by Wencan Jin, the Thomas and Jean Walter Endowed Associate Professor in Auburn’s Department of Physics, and graduate student Mohamed Kandil. Their paper, “Optical Poling of a Quantum Ferroelectric Metal across the Order-Disorder Phase Transition,” received an Editors’ Suggestion designation from Physical Review Letters. Scientists at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology produced the crystals used in the study.
A Decades-Old Mystery Hidden Inside a Crystal
The researchers investigated a modified version of strontium titanate, a material with an unusual combination of electrical characteristics. Although electrons can travel through the crystal, it also contains extremely small regions with positive and negative electrical sides. Known as polar nanoregions, these microscopic “islands” can point in different directions or become aligned with one another. Understanding how and why this alignment occurs is essential to explaining the material’s properties and learning how to manipulate them.
Scientists have spent decades trying to determine what happens when these regions become organized. One possibility is that atoms move together to produce the polarized state. Another is that the tiny electrical islands are already there and simply begin pointing in the same direction as temperatures fall. The distinction is similar to the difference between assembling a group of people and asking people who are already gathered to turn and face the same way. Because the regions are extraordinarily small and produce very weak signals, determining which explanation is correct has been a persistent challenge.
Laser Experiments Reveal How Electrical Order Emerges
To investigate, the Auburn researchers developed an exceptionally sensitive system that uses lasers to measure subtle changes in the crystal. By studying how the material altered incoming light, they were able to monitor the orientation of its electrical regions while repeatedly heating and cooling the sample.
The measurements revealed a clear pattern. At warmer temperatures, the tiny regions pointed in seemingly random directions. When the crystal cooled, however, they began adopting preferred orientations. This behavior provided compelling evidence that the electrical islands existed before becoming aligned, supporting the explanation that cooling organizes regions already present in the material.
A Flash of Light Creates Order in a Trillionth of a Second
The team went beyond observing this natural process. Researchers also demonstrated that short laser pulses could temporarily align the electrical islands, even at higher temperatures when the regions would ordinarily remain disorganized. Using an optical measurement, they were able to detect the pattern produced by the laser light.
The effect was extraordinarily brief, lasting approximately one picosecond, or one trillionth of a second. Nevertheless, the ability to create and detect this electrical alignment using light provides a promising approach for studying how information might be controlled at extremely high speeds.
Three Years of Experiments Lead to a Breakthrough
Achieving these results required considerable patience and technical refinement. The collaboration began at the 2023 American Physical Society March Meeting, where Jin met Japanese researchers capable of producing the specialized crystals needed for the experiments.
Back at Auburn, the team spent almost a year refining its equipment before it could reliably detect the weak optical signals from the tiny electrical regions. The next obstacle was even more demanding: measuring the extremely short interval during which laser illumination caused the regions to align.
“The breakthrough came in 2025, when Mohamed finally observed the disordered polar regions becoming aligned under laser illumination,” Jin said. “Seeing that signal emerge was a thrilling moment for the team.”
The achievement also represents an important personal milestone for Kandil, whose first published research paper reflects three years of dedicated experimental work.
“This experiment has truly been Mohamed’s odyssey,” Jin said. “It took him three years of dedication to complete the work and achieve his first publication.”
New Possibilities for Ultrafast Information Technology
The discovery provides important evidence about how electrical order develops in this unusual crystal while also establishing a method for manipulating that order with light. Rather than simply observing the material’s internal behavior, researchers can now briefly influence its microscopic electrical patterns and detect the resulting changes.
Although practical applications remain a future possibility, the experiments offer a new way to investigate the rapid electrical processes occurring inside quantum materials. By revealing how light can control these previously elusive patterns, the Auburn researchers have opened another avenue for exploring technologies that could one day transform how information is processed and stored.