Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Dienst, A.
• Casandruc, E.
• Fausti, D.
• Zhang, L.
• Eckstein, M.
• Hoffmann, M.
• Khanna, V.
• Dean, N.
• Gensch, M.
• Winnerl, S.
• Seidel, W.
• Pyon, S.
• Takayama, T.
• Takagi, H.
• Cavalleri, A.

Titel

Optical excitation of Josephson plasma solitons in a cuprate superconductor

Ist Teil von

• Nature materials, 2013-06, Vol.12 (6), p.535-541

Ort / Verlag

London: Nature Publishing Group UK

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Josephson plasma waves are linear electromagnetic modes that propagate along the planes of cuprate superconductors, sustained by interlayer tunnelling supercurrents. For strong electromagnetic fields, as the supercurrents approach the critical value, the electrodynamics become highly nonlinear. Josephson plasma solitons (JPSs) are breather excitations predicted in this regime, bound vortex–antivortex pairs that propagate coherently without dispersion. We experimentally demonstrate the excitation of a JPS in La 1.84 Sr 0.16 CuO 4 , using intense narrowband radiation from an infrared free-electron laser tuned to the 2-THz Josephson plasma resonance. The JPS becomes observable as it causes a transparency window in the opaque spectral region immediately below the plasma resonance. Optical control of magnetic-flux-carrying solitons may lead to new applications in terahertz-frequency plasmonics, in information storage and transport and in the manipulation of high- T c superconductivity. Josephson plasma solitons are a kind of excitation predicted to occur in cuprate superconductors subject to strong electromagnetic fields. By using intense radiation from a free-electron laser, these modes are now demonstrated experimentally in the copper oxide material La 1.84 Sr 0.16 CuO 4 .