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Understanding the thermoelastic response of a nanostructure is crucial for the choice of materials and interfaces in electronic devices with improved and tailored transport properties, at the length scales of the present technology. Here we show how the deposition of a $MoS_2$ monolayer can strongly modify the nanoscale thermoelastic dynamics of silicon substrates close to their interface. We achieve this result by creating a transient grating with extreme ultraviolet light, using ultrashort free-electron laser pulses, whose $\approx$84 nm period is comparable to the size of elements typically used in nanodevices, such as electric contacts and nanowires. The thermoelastic response, featured by coherent acoustic waves and an incoherent relaxation, is tangibly modified by the presence of monolayer $MoS_2$. Namely, we observed a major reduction of the amplitude of the surface mode, which is almost suppressed, while the longitudinal mode is basically unperturbed, aside from a faster decay of the acoustic modulations. We interpret this behavior as a selective modification of the surface elasticity and we discuss the conditions to observe such effect, which might be of immediate relevance for the design of Si-based nanoscale devices., Comment: 27 pages, 15 figures

The absence of efficient light modulators for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and X-ray photons significantly limits their real-life application, particularly when even slight complexity of the beam patterns is required. Here we report on a novel approach to reversible imprinting of a holographic mask in an electronic Wigner crystal material with a sub-90 nm feature size. The structure is imprinted on a sub-picosecond time-scale using EUV laser pulses and acts as a high-efficiency diffraction grating that deflects EUV or soft X-ray light. The imprinted nanostructure is stable after the removal of the exciting beams at low temperatures but can be easily erased by a single heating beam. Modeling shows that the efficiency of the device can exceed 1%, approaching state-of-the-art etched gratings, but with the benefit of being programmable and tunable over a large range of wavelengths. The observed effect is based on the rapid change of lattice constant upon transition between metastable electronically-ordered phases in a layered transition metal dichalcogenide. The proposed approach is potentially useful for creating tunable light modulators in the EUV and soft X-ray spectral ranges.

We present the generation of transient polarization gratings at the nanoscale, achieved using a tailored accelerator configuration of the FERMI free electron laser. We demonstrate the capabilities of such a transient polarization grating by comparing its induced dynamics with the ones triggered by a more conventional intensity grating on a thin film ferrimagnetic alloy. While the signal of the intensity grating is dominated by the thermoelastic response of the system, such a contribution is suppressed in the case of the polarization grating. This exposes helicity-dependent magnetization dynamics that have so-far remained hidden under the large thermally driven response. We anticipate nanoscale transient polarization gratings to become useful for the study of any physical, chemical and biological systems possessing chiral symmetry.

A two-dimensional layer of oxide reveals itself as a essential element to drive the photocatalytic activity in a nanostructured hybrid material, which combines high-quality epitaxial graphene and titanium dioxide nanoparticles. In particular, it has been revealed that the addition of a 2D Ti oxide layer sandwiched between graphene and metal induces a p-doping of graphene and a consistent shift in the Ti d states. These modifications induced by the interfacial oxide layer induce a reduction of the probability of charge carrier recombination and enhance the photocatalytic activity of the heterostructure. This is indicative of a capital role played by thin oxide films in fine-tuning the properties of heterostructures based on graphene and pave the way to new combinations of graphene/oxides for photocatalysis-oriented applications.

Time-resolved X-ray Emission/Absorption Spectroscopy (Tr-XES/XAS) is an informative experimental tool sensitive to electronic dynamics in materials, widely exploited in diverse research fields. Typically, Tr-XES/XAS requires X-ray pulses with both a narrow bandwidth and sub-picosecond pulse duration, a combination that in principle finds its optimum with Fourier transform-limited pulses. In this work, we explore an alternative xperimental approach, capable of simultaneously retrieving information about unoccupied (XAS) and occupied (XES) states from the stochastic fluctuations of broadband extreme ultraviolet pulses of a free-electron laser. We used this method, in combination with singular value decomposition and Tikhonov regularization procedures, to determine the XAS/XES response from a crystalline silicon sample at the L2,3-edge, with an energy resolution of a few tens of meV. Finally, we combined this spectroscopic method with a pump-probe approach to measure structural and electronic dynamics of a silicon membrane. Tr-XAS/XES data obtained after photoexcitation with an optical laser pulse at 390 nm allowed us to observe perturbations of the band structure, which are compatible with the formation of the predicted precursor state of a non-thermal solid-liquid phase transition associated with a bond softening phenomenon.

The possibility to obtain a three-dimensional representation of a single object with sub-$\mu$m resolution is crucial in many fields, from material science to clinical diagnostics. This is typically achieved through tomography, which combines multiple two-dimensional images of the same object captured at different orientations. However, this serial imaging method prevents single-shot acquisition in imaging experiments at free electron lasers. In the present experiment, we report on a new approach to 3D imaging using extreme-ultraviolet radiation. In this method, two EUV pulses hit simultaneously an isolated 3D object from different sides, generating independent coherent diffraction patterns, resulting in two distinct bidimensional views obtained via phase retrieval. These views are then used to obtain a 3D reconstruction using a ray tracing algorithm. This EUV stereoscopic imaging approach, similar to the natural process of binocular vision, provides sub-$\mu$m spatial resolution and single shot capability. Moreover, ultrafast time resolution and spectroscopy can be readily implemented, a further extension to X-ray wavelengths can be envisioned as well., Comment: Authors Danny Fainozzi and Matteo Ippoliti contributed equally

Time-resolved ultrafast EUV magnetic scattering was used to test a recent prediction of >10 km/s domain wall speeds by optically exciting a magnetic sample with a nanoscale labyrinthine domain pattern. Ultrafast distortion of the diffraction pattern was observed at markedly different timescales compared to the magnetization quenching. The diffraction pattern distortion shows a threshold-dependence with laser fluence, not seen for magnetization quenching, consistent with a picture of domain wall motion with pinning sites. Supported by simulations, we show that a speed of $\approx$ 66 km/s for highly curved domain walls can explain the experimental data. While our data agree with the prediction of extreme, non-equilibrium wall speeds locally, it differs from the details of the theory, suggesting that additional mechanisms are required to fully understand these effects., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; Supplemental Material: 9 pages, 9 figures

The recently discovered topological fluctuation state provides a fascinating new perspective on the ultrafast emergence of topology in condensed matter systems. However, rather little is known about the physics of this state and the origin of the topological fluctuations. Using time-resolved small-angle x-ray scattering, we observe that topological fluctuation states appear after laser excitation even if the final state does not host stable skyrmions. Simulations support these findings and reveal that the fluctuations originate from the competition between spontaneous nucleation and decay of skyrmions, consistent with Arrhenius-like activation over a potential barrier. Stable skyrmions can freeze out of such fluctuations when the effective temperature of the system relaxes faster than the decay time of the skyrmions. Our results reveal a robust scenario for the generation of topological fluctuation states, potentially enabling their study in a wide variety of magnetic systems.

We demonstrate the measurement of ultrafast dynamics using ghost spectroscopy and a pump-probe approach with an optical pump and a short-wavelength radiation probe. The ghost spectroscopy approach is used to overcome the challenge of the strong intensity and spectrum fluctuations at free-electron lasers and to provide high -spectral resolution, which enables the measurement of small energy shifts in the absorption spectrum. We exploit the high resolution to explore the dynamics of the charge carrier excitations and relaxations and their impact on the photoinduced structural changes in silicon by measuring the variation of the absorption spectrum of a Si(100) membrane near the silicon L2,3 edge and the accompanying edge shifts in response to the optical illumination.

Ultrafast control of magnetization on the nanometer length scale, in particular all-optical switching, is key to putting ultrafast magnetism on the path towards future technological application in data storage technology. However, magnetization manipulation with light on this length scale is challenging due to the wavelength limitations of optical radiation. Here, we excite transient magnetic gratings in a GdFe alloy with a periodicity of 87 nm by interference of two coherent femtosecond light pulses in the extreme ultraviolet spectral range at the free electron laser facility FERMI. The subsequent ultrafast evolution of the magnetization pattern is probed by diffraction of a third, time-delayed pulse tuned to the Gd N-edge at a wavelength of 8.3 nm. By examining the simultaneously recorded first and second diffraction orders and by performing reference real-space measurements with a wide-field magneto-optical microscope with femtosecond time resolution, we can conclusively demonstrate the ultrafast emergence of all-optical switching on the nanometer length scale., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures

We demonstrate a simple and robust high-resolution ghost spectroscopy approach for x-ray and extreme ultraviolet absorption spectroscopy at free-electron laser sources. Our approach requires an on-line spectrometer before the sample and a downstream bucket detector. We use this method to measure the absorption spectrum of silicon, silicon carbide and silicon nitride membranes in the vicinity of the silicon L2,3-edge. We show that ghost spectroscopy allows the high-resolution reconstruction of the sample spectral response using a coarse energy scan with self-amplified spontaneous emission radiation. For the conditions of our experiment the energy resolution of the ghost-spectroscopy reconstruction is higher than the energy resolution reached by scanning the energy range by narrow spectral bandwidth radiation produced by the seeded free-electron laser. When we set the photon energy resolution of the ghost spectroscopy to be equal to the resolution of the measurement with the seeded radiation, the measurement time with the ghost spectroscopy method is shorter than scanning the photon energy with seeded radiation. The exact conditions for which ghost spectroscopy can provide higher resolution at shorter times than measurement with narrow band scans depend on the details of the measurements and on the properties of the samples and should be addressed in future studies.

In this work, we study the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the paradigmatic quasi-one-dimensional material (TaSe$_4$)$_2$I, that exhibits a transition into an incommensurate CDW phase when cooled just below room temperature, namely at T$_{\rm{CDW}} $= 263 K. We make use of both optical laser and free-electron laser (FEL) based time-resolved spectroscopies in order to study the effect of a selective excitation on the normal-state and on the CDW phases, by probing the near-infrared/visible optical properties both along and perpendicularly to the direction of the CDW, where the system is metallic and insulating, respectively. Excitation of the core-levels by ultrashort X-ray FEL pulses at 47 eV and 119 eV induces reflectivity transients resembling those recorded when only exciting the valence band of the compound - by near-infrared pulses at 1.55 eV - in the case of the insulating sub-system. Conversely, the metallic sub-system displays a relaxation dynamics which depends on the energy of photo-excitation. Moreover, excitation of the CDW amplitude mode is recorded only for excitation at low-photon-energy. This fact suggests that the coupling of light to ordered states of matter can predominantly be achieved when directly injecting delocalized carriers in the valence band, rather than localized excitations in the core levels. On a complementary side, table-top experiments allow us to prove the quasi-unidirectional nature of the CDW phase in (TaSe$_4$)$_2$I, whose fingerprints are detected along its $c$-axis only. Our results provide new insights on the symmetry of the ordered phase of (TaSe$_4$)$_2$I perturbed by a selective excitation, and suggest a novel approach based on complementary table-top and FEL spectroscopies for the study of complex materials., Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures