Ultrafast dynamics of fluctuations in high-temperature superconductors far from equilibrium

Abstract

Despite extensive work on high-temperature superconductors, the critical behavior of an incipient condensate has so far been studied exclusively under equilibrium conditions. Here, we excite Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+d with a femtosecond laser pulse and monitor the subsequent nonequilibrium dynamics of the mid-infrared conductivity. Our data allow us to discriminate temperature regimes where superconductivity is either coherent, fluctuating or vanishingly small. Above the transition temperature Tc, we make the striking observation that the relaxation to equilibrium exhibits power-law dynamics and scaling behavior, both for optimally and underdoped superconductors. Our findings can in part be modeled using time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau theory and provide strong indication of universality in systems far from equilibrium.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Tracking Cooper Pairs in a Cuprate Superconductor by Ultrafast Angle-Resolved Photoemission
• Femtosecond Quasiparticle and Phonon Dynamics in Superconducting YBa2Cu3O7 Studied by Wideband Terahertz Spectroscopy
• Separating pairing from quantum phase coherence dynamics above the superconducting transition by femtosecond spectroscopy

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• Superconducting fluctuations probed by the Higgs mode in Bi${}_2$Sr${}_2$CaCu${}_2$O${}_{8+x}$ thin films
• Signatures of enhanced superconducting phase coherence through MID-IR excitation in optimally doped Y-Bi2212
• Superconducting fluctuations in a thin NbN film probed by the Hall effect
• Non-stationary Statistics and Formation Jitter in Transient Photon Condensation
• A theory of coupled dual dynamics of macroscopic phase coherence and microscopic electronic fluids: effect of dephasing on cuprate superconductivity
• Photoinduced filling of near nodal gap in Bi${}_2$Sr${}_2$CaCu${}_2$O${}_{8+\delta }$
• Anisotropic Time-Domain Electronic Response in Cuprates