Toward the equilibrium ground state of the charge density waves in rare-earth tritellurides

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

We show that the charge density wave (CDW) ground state below the Peierls transition temperature TCDW of rare-earth tritellurides is not at its equilibrium value, but depends on the time where the system was kept at a fixed temperature below TCDW. This ergodicity breaking is revealed by the increase of the threshold electric field for CDW sliding which depends exponentially on time. We tentatively explain this behavior by the reorganization of the oligomeric (Teₓ)^2- sequence forming the CDW modulation.