Theoretical Modeling of the Non-equilibrium Amorphous State in 1T-TaS2

Abstract

1T-TaS2 is known for it’s remarkably complex phase diagram and it’s unique long-lived metastable hidden (H) state. Recently, a novel metastable state has been discovered using higher fluences for photoexcitation than in the case of the H state. The state has been dubbed as amorphous (A) due to it’s similarity to glass. Expanding on the work of Brazovskii and Karpov, we show that the A state can be successfully modeled with classical interacting polarons on a two dimensional hexagonal lattice. We have found that the polaron configuration of the A state corresponds to a frustrated screened Coulomb system, where there is no order-disorder phase transition.