2003 Volume 72 Issue 6 Pages 697-704
In recent years, photoinduced creation of a macroscopic excited domain that has new structural and electronic orders quite different from those of the ground state has been demonstrated in several materials. Since the threshold−like behavior and the existence of the incubation period strongly imply a cooperative interaction in photo−excited states, these phenomena are categorized as‘photoinduced phase transition (PIPT) phenomena’. In this article, photo−induced phase transition phenomena are reviewed, focusing our attention on the generation mechanism of new macroscopic orders. Our recent results on PIPT in spin−crossover complexes and quantum paraelectrics are presented.
