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Upon excitation with an intense ultrafast laser pulse, a symmetry-brokenground state can undergo a non-equilibrium phase transition through pathwaysdissimilar from those in thermal equilibrium. Determining the mechanismunderlying these photo-induced phase transitions (PIPTs) has been along-standing issue in the study of condensed matter systems. To this end, weinvestigate the light-induced melting of a unidirectional charge density wave(CDW) material, LaTe$_3$. Using a suite of time-resolved probes, weindependently track the amplitude and phase dynamics of the CDW. We find that aquick ($\sim\,$1$\,$ps) recovery of the CDW amplitude is followed by a slowerreestablishment of phase coherence. This longer timescale is dictated by thepresence of topological defects: long-range order (LRO) is inhibited and isonly restored when the defects annihilate. Our results provide a framework forunderstanding other PIPTs by identifying the generation of defects as agoverning mechanism.

Disentangling amplitude and phase dynamics of a charge density wave in a photo-induced phase transition