Micro-diffraction imaging of a sliding CDW state

Some incommensurate charge density waves (CDW) materials display a peculiar non-linear current above a certain threshold, which is believe to be due to a charge transport by a travelling soliton lattice. The electric field induces a CDW elastic stress near the contacts that can be relaxed by the nucleation of these topological solitons. The aim of this proposal is to study the CDW deformation under current near the contacts and in the bulk of the sample in the typical CDW material K 0.3 MoO 3 using X-ray nano-diffraction on the CDW satellite reflection with the nanometric and coherent beam available on ID01. After 2 experiments already performed on the 1D NbSe 3 system [2] and the quasi-2D TbTe 3 at ID01 [4], showing a quite different behaviour, we wish to complete the comparison by studying the quasi-1D K 0.3 MoO 3 system to reveal the relationship between CDW deformation and dimensionality.