Photoinduced time-resolved electrodynamics of superconducting metals and alloys

Abstract

The photoexcited state in superconducting metals and alloys was studied via pump-probe spectroscopy. A pulsed Ti:sapphire laser was used to create the non-equilibrium state and the far-infrared pulses of a synchrotron storage ring, to which the laser is synchronized, measured the changes in the material optical properties. Both the time- and frequency- dependent photoinduced spectra of Pb, Nb, NbN, Nb{0.5}Ti{0.5}N, and Pb{0.75}Bi{0.25} superconducting thin films were measured in the low-fluence regime. The time dependent data establish the regions where the relaxation rate is dominated either by the phonon escape time (phonon bottleneck effect) or by the intrinsic quasiparticle recombination time. The photoinduced spectra measure directly the reduction of the superconducting gap due to an excess number of quasiparticles created by the short laser pulses. This gap shift allows us to establish the temperature range over which the low fluence approximation is valid.

12 pages with 10 figures

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Cited by in corpus (12)

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• Energy-gap dynamics of superconducting NbN thin films studied by time-resolved terahertz spectroscopy
• Hotspot Relaxation Dynamics in a Current Carrying Superconductor
• Non-equilibrium phenomena in superconductors probed by femtosecond time-domain spectroscopy
• Infrared and Terahertz Spectroscopy of Strongly Correlated Electron Systems under Extreme Conditions
• Ultrafast dynamics in the presence of antiferromagnetic correlations in electron-doped cuprate La${}_{2-x}$Ce${}_x$CuO${}_{4\pm \delta }$
• Design of an ultra-low mode volume piezo-optomechanical quantum transducer
• Evidence of a full gap in LaFeAsO${}_{1-x}$F${}_x$ thin films from infrared spectroscopy
• Emergent properties and the multiscale characterization challenge in condensed matter, from crystals to complex materials: a Review
• Emergence of Larkin-Ovchinnikov-type superconducting state in a voltage-driven superconductor
• Quasiparticle Relaxation Dynamics in URu${}_{2-x}$Fe${}_x$Si${}_2$ Single Crystals
• Effect of a magnetic field on the quasiparticle recombination in superconductors