2012/05/08 by Andreas Glossner, Glossner, Andreas, Caihong Zhang +11
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Gyrotron and Vacuum Electronics Research #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) #Terahertz technology and applications #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1205.1684
4 pages, 5 figures
arxiv created 2012/05/08 · openalex publication_date 2012/05/08 · arxiv updated 2012/05/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We show that strong electric fields of ~ 30 kV cm^(-1) at terahertz frequencies can significantly weaken the superconducting characteristics of cuprate superconductors. High-power terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) was used to investigate the in-plane conductivity of YBa2Cu3O7-delta (YBCO) with highly intense single-cycle terahertz pulses. Even though the terahertz photon energy (~ 1.5 meV) was significantly smaller than the energy gap in YBCO (~ 20-30 meV), the optical conductivity was highly sensitive to the field strength of the applied terahertz transients. Possibly, this is due to an ultrafast, field-induced modification of the superconductor's effective coupling function, leading to a massive Cooper pair breakup. The effect was evident for several YBCO thin films on MgO and LSAT substrates.