2011/01/13 by Daniele Fausti, R. Tobey, Nicky Dean +7 · 6 citations
Physics and Astronomy · Materials Science · #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Magnetic and transport properties of perovskites and related materials
paper · doi:10.1126/science.1197294
openalex publication_date 2011/01/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
One of the most intriguing features of some high-temperature cuprate superconductors is the interplay between one-dimensional "striped" spin order and charge order, and superconductivity. We used mid-infrared femtosecond pulses to transform one such stripe-ordered compound, nonsuperconducting La(1.675)Eu(0.2)Sr(0.125)CuO(4), into a transient three-dimensional superconductor. The emergence of coherent interlayer transport was evidenced by the prompt appearance of a Josephson plasma resonance in the c-axis optical properties. An upper limit for the time scale needed to form the superconducting phase is estimated to be 1 to 2 picoseconds, which is significantly faster than expected. This places stringent new constraints on our understanding of stripe order and its relation to superconductivity.