Photoinduced chain-oxygen ordering in detwinned YBa2Cu3O6.7 single crystals studied by reflectance-anisotropy spectroscopy -: art. no. 224508

We present a reflectance-anisotropy spectroscopy (RAS) investigation of photoexcitation and annealing effects in oxygen deficient detwinned YBa2Cu3O6.7 single crystals. Well-resolved RAS spectral features are either bleached or enhanced on a time scale of hours upon laser illumination with polarization parallel to the Cu(1)-O(1) chains. These photoinduced effects recover with room temperature annealing in the dark. Based on previous ellipsometric studies and on cluster models for the oxygen Cu-O(1) chain-fragments we are able to assign the RAS peaks that depend on illumination to optical transitions involving copper atoms located either on short chain-fragments or in isolated Cu-O(4)(2) sites. This provides strong evidence that photoinduced chain-oxygen ordering is indeed at the origin of persistent photoconductivity and Raman vibrational mode bleaching in these materials.