Kinetic approach to metastable electronic states hidden behind thermodynamic equilibrium

Thermodynamics has been a solid basis for controlling a state of matter in the field of electronic phase control. In other fields, however, people have been empirically created metastable states, such as hard steel and glass, which are not thermodynamically most stable but stable in practice. We have developed metastable electronic states hidden behind thermodynamic equilibrium with rapid cooling technique, and thus established a method to control electronic states beyond the framework of thermodynamics. (author)