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Nonequilibrium hidden states, both transient and long-lived, provide a uniquewindow into thermally inaccessible regimes of strong coupling betweenmicroscopic degrees of freedom in quantum materials. Understanding the physicalorigin of these states is of both fundamental and practical significance,allowing the exploration of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics and thedevelopment of optoelectronic devices with on-demand photoresponses. However,mapping the ultrafast formation of a long-lived hidden phase remains along-standing challenge in physics since the initial state of the system is notrecovered rapidly and conventional pump-probe methods are thus not applicable.Here, using a suite of state-of-the-art single-shot spectroscopy techniques, wepresent a direct ultrafast visualization of the photoinduced phase transitionto both transient and long-lived hidden states in an electronic crystal,1T-TaS2. Capturing the dynamics of this complex phase transformation in asingle-shot fashion demonstrates a commonality in microscopic pathways, drivenby the collapse of charge order, that the system undergoes to enter the hiddenstate and provides unambiguous spectral fingerprints that distinguish suchstate from thermally accessible phases. We present a theory offluctuation-dominated process that explains both the dynamics and the nature ofthe metastable state. Our results settle the debate around the origin of thiselusive metastable state and pave the way for the discovery of new quantumphases of matter.

Snapshots of a light-induced metastable hidden phase driven by the collapse of charge order