Transient control over the atomic potential-energy landscapes of solids could lead to new states of matter and to quantum control of nuclear motion on the timescale of lattice vibrations. Recently developed ultrafast time-resolved diffraction techniques combine ultrafast temporal manipulation with atomic-scale spatial resolution and femtosecond temporal resolution. These advances have enabled investigations of photo-induced structural changes in bulk solids that often occur on timescales as short as a few hundred femtoseconds. In contrast, experiments at surfaces and on single atomic layers such as graphene report timescales of structural changes that are orders of magnitude longer. This raises the question of whether the structural response of low-dimensional materials to femtosecond laser excitation is, in general, limited. Here we show that a photo-induced transition from the low- to high-symmetry state of a charge density wave in atomic indium (In) wires supported by a silicon (Si) surface takes place within 350 femtoseconds. The optical excitation breaks and creates In-In bonds, leading to the non-thermal excitation of soft phonon modes, and drives the structural transition in the limit of critically damped nuclear motion through coupling of these soft phonon modes to a manifold of surface and interface phonons that arise from the symmetry breaking at the silicon surface. This finding demonstrates that carefully tuned electronic excitations can create non-equilibrium potential energy surfaces that drive structural dynamics at interfaces in the quantum limit (that is, in a regime in which the nuclear motion is directed and deterministic). This technique could potentially be used to tune the dynamic response of a solid to optical excitation, and has widespread potential application, for example in ultrafast detectors.

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The photoinduced structural dynamics of the atomic wire system on the Si(111)-In surface has been studied by ultrafast electron diffraction in reflection geometry. Upon intense fs-laser excitation, this system can be driven in around 1 ps from the insulating false(8×2false) reconstructed low temperature phase to a metastable metallic false(4×1false) reconstructed high temperature phase. Subsequent to the structural transition, the surface heats up on a 6 times slower timescale as determined from a transient Debye-Waller analysis of the diffraction spots. From a comparison with the structural response of the high temperature false(4×1false) phase, we conclude that electron-phonon coupling is responsible for the slow energy transfer from the excited electron system to the lattice. The significant difference in timescales is evidence that the photoinduced structural transition is non-thermally driven.