Probing Inhomogeneous Cuprate Superconductivity by Terahertz Josephson Echo Spectroscopy

Abstract

Inhomogeneities play a crucial role in determining the properties of quantum materials. Yet methods that can measure these inhomogeneities are few, and apply to only a fraction of the relevant microscopic phenomena. For example, the electronic properties of cuprate materials are known to be inhomogeneous over nanometer length scales, although questions remain about how such disorder influences supercurrents and their dynamics. Here, two-dimensional terahertz spectroscopy is used to study interlayer superconducting tunneling in near-optimally-doped La1.83Sr0.17CuO4. We isolate a 2 THz Josephson echo signal with which we disentangle intrinsic lifetime broadening from extrinsic inhomogeneous broadening. We find that the Josephson plasmons are only weakly inhomogeneously broadened, with an inhomogeneous linewidth that is three times smaller than their intrinsic lifetime broadening. This extrinsic broadening remains constant up to 0.7Tc, above which it is overcome by the thermally-increased lifetime broadening. Crucially, the effects of disorder on the Josephson plasma resonance are nearly two orders of magnitude smaller than the in-plane variations in the superconducting gap in this compound, which have been previously documented using Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy (STM) measurements. Hence, even in the presence of significant disorder in the superfluid density, the finite frequency interlayer charge fluctuations exhibit dramatically reduced inhomogeneous broadening. We present a model that relates disorder in the superfluid density to the observed lifetimes.

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• Discovery of an Unconventional Quantum Echo by Interference of Higgs Coherence
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• Multidimensional coherent spectroscopy of correlated lattice systems
• Extracting Nonlinear Dynamical Response Functions from Time Evolution
• Amplitude mode in a multi-gap superconductor MgB${}_2$ investigated by terahertz two-dimensional coherent spectroscopy
• Unifying Measurement Schemes in 2-D Terahertz Spectroscopy
• Sparse Optimization of Two-Dimensional Terahertz Spectroscopy
• Probing Complex Decoherence Processes in Materials for Quantum Applications
• Photodynamic melting of phase-reversed charge stripes and enhanced condensation
• Long-time divergences in the nonlinear response of gapped one-dimensional many-particle systems
• Momentum-resolved two-dimensional spectroscopy as a probe of nonlinear quantum field dynamics
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• Enhanced coherent terahertz emission from critical superconducting fluctuations in YBa${}_2$Cu${}_3$O${}_{6.6}$