Electronic Coherent Control of an Insulator-to-Metal Mott Transition Paolo Franceschini, 1, 2, 3, 4, ∗ Veronica R. Policht, 5 Alessandra Milloch, 1, 2, 3 Andrea Ronchi, 1, 2, 3, 6 Selene Mor, 1, 2 Simon Mellaerts, 3 Wei-Fan Hsu, 3 Stefania Pagliara, 1, 2 Gabriele Ferrini, 1, 2 Francesco Banfi, 7 Michele Fabrizio, 8 Mariela Menghini, 9 Jean-Pierre Locquet, 3 Stefano Dal Conte, 5 Giulio Cerullo, 5 and Claudio Giannetti 1,2, † 1 Department of Mathematics and Physics, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Brescia I-25133, Italy 2 ILAMP (Interdisciplinary Laboratories for Advanced Materials Physics), Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Brescia I-25133, Italy 3 Department of Physics and Astronomy, KU Leuven, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium 4 Present address: CNR-INO (National Institute of Optics), via Branze 45, 25123 Brescia, Italy 5 Department of Physics, Politecnico di Milano, IT-20133, Milano, Italy 6 Present address: Pirelli Tyre S.p.A, viale Piero e Alberto Pirelli 25, Milano 20126, Italy 7 FemtoNanoOptics group, Université de Lyon, CNRS, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Institut Lumière Matière, F-69622 Villeurbanne, France 8 Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA), 34136 Trieste, Italy 9 IMDEA-Nanociencia, E-28049, Madrid, Spain Managing light-matter interaction on timescales faster than the loss of elec- tronic coherence is key for achieving the full quantum control of final products in solid-solid transformations. In this work, we demonstrate coherent electronic control of the photoinduced insulator-to-metal transition in the prototypical Mott insulator V 2 O 3 . Selective excitation of a specific interband transition with two phase-locked light pulses manipulates the orbital occupation of the corre- lated bands in a way that depends on the coherent evolution of the photoinduced superposition of states. Comparison between experimental results and numer- ical solutions of the optical Bloch equations provides an electronic coherence time on the order of 5 fs. Temperature dependent experiments suggest that the electronic coherence time is enhanced in the vicinity of the insulator-to-metal transition critical temperature, thus highlighting the role of fluctuations in de- termining the electronic coherence. These results open new routes to selectively switch functionalities of quantum materials and coherently control solid-solid electronic transformations. arXiv:2211.01735v1 [cond-mat.str-el] 3 Nov 2022