Transiently enhanced interlayer tunneling in optically driven high-Tc superconductors
Files
First author draft.
Date
2017-10
Authors
Okamoto, Jun-ichi
Hu, Wanzheng
Cavalleri, Andrea
Mathey, Ludwig
Version
First author draft
OA Version
Citation
Jun-ichi Okamoto, Wanzheng Hu, Andrea Cavalleri, Ludwig Mathey. 2017. "Transiently enhanced interlayer tunneling in optically driven high- superconductors." Physical Review B, v. 96, Issue 14, https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.96.144505
Abstract
Recent pump-probe experiments reported an enhancement of superconducting transport along the c axis of underdoped YBa2Cu3O6+δ (YBCO), induced by a midinfrared optical pump pulse tuned to a specific lattice vibration. To understand this transient nonequilibrium state, we develop a pump-probe formalism for a stack of Josephson junctions, and we consider the tunneling strengths in the presence of modulation with an ultrashort optical pulse. We demonstrate that a transient enhancement of the Josephson coupling can be obtained for pulsed excitation and that this can be even larger than in a continuously driven steady state. Especially interesting is the conclusion that the effect is largest when the material is parametrically driven at a frequency immediately above the plasma frequency, in agreement with what is found experimentally. For bilayer Josephson junctions, an enhancement similar to that experimentally is predicted below the critical temperature Tc. This model reproduces the essential features of the enhancement measured below Tc. To reproduce the experimental results above Tc, we will explore extensions of this model, such as in-plane and amplitude fluctuations, elsewhere.