Ultrafast manipulation of vibrational coherence provides a route to control the structure of solids. However, this strategy can only induce long-range correlations and cannot modify atomic structure locally, which is a requirement for many technological applications such as non-volatile electronics. Here we demonstrate that ultrafast lasers can generate incoherent structural fluctuations that are more efficient for material control than coherent vibrations, extending optical control to a wide range of materials. We observe that local non-equilibrium lattice distortions generated by a weak laser pulse reduce the energy barrier to switch between insulating and metallic states in vanadium dioxide. Seeding inhomogeneous structural fluctuations presents an alternative, more energy-efficient, route for controlling materials that may be applicable to all solids, including those used in data- and energy-storage devices.

振动相干性的超快操纵提供了控制固体结构的途径。然而，这种策略只能引起远程相关性，而不能局部修改原子结构，而这是许多技术应用（例如非易失性电子产品）的要求。在这里，我们证明超快激光器可以产生不相干的结构波动，这种波动比相干振动更有效地控制材料，从而将光学控制扩展到更广泛的材料。我们观察到，弱激光脉冲产生的局部非平衡晶格畸变降低了二氧化钒中绝缘态和金属态之间切换的能量势垒。播种不均匀结构波动提供了一种替代的、更节能的材料控制途径，可适用于所有固体，包括数据和能量存储设备中使用的固体。