Infrared nano-spectroscopy and imaging of collective superfluid excitations in conventional and high-temperature superconductors

Abstract

We investigate near-field infrared spectroscopy and superfluid polariton imaging experiments on conventional and unconventional superconductors. Our modeling shows that near-field spectroscopy can measure the magnitude of the superconducting energy gap in Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer-like superconductors with nanoscale spatial resolution. We demonstrate how the same technique can measure the c-axis plasma frequency, and thus the c-axis superfluid density, of layered unconventional superconductors with a similar spatial resolution. Our modeling also shows that near-field techniques can image superfluid surface mode interference patterns near physical and electronic boundaries. We describe how these images can be used to extract the collective mode dispersion of anisotropic superconductors with sub-diffractional spatial resolution.

11 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (3)

• The `Higgs' Amplitude Mode at the Two-Dimensional Superfluid-Mott Insulator Transition
• Applications of hyperbolic metamaterial substrates
• Local measurement of the superfluid density in the pnictide superconductor Ba(Fe${}_{1-x}$Co${}_x$)${}_2$As${}_2$ across the superconducting dome

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Cavity magnon-polaritons in cuprate parent compounds
• Harnessing Ultraconfined Graphene Plasmons to Probe the Electrodynamics of Superconductors
• Generalized plasma waves in layered superconductors
• Surface Josephson plasma waves in a high-temperature superconductor
• Coherent Emission from Surface Josephson Plasmons in Striped Cuprates
• Hydrodynamics of plastic deformations in electronic crystals
• Dispersion of plasmons in three-dimensional superconductors
• Optical absorption in tilted geometries as an indirect measurement of longitudinal plasma waves in layered cuprates
• Artifact Free Transient Near-Field Nanoscopy
• Enhanced coherent terahertz emission from critical superconducting fluctuations in YBa${}_2$Cu${}_3$O${}_{6.6}$