2023/03/27 by Sambuddha Chattopadhyay, Christian Eckhardt, Chattopadhyay, Sambuddha +15 · 3 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · #Advanced Materials Characterization Techniques #FOS: Physical sciences #Iron-based superconductors research #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Optics (physics.optics) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) #Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2303.15355
openalex publication_date 2023/03/27 · openalex created_date 2023/03/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Inspired by the striking discovery of metastable superconductivity in K3C60 at 100K, far above T_\textrmc=20K, we discuss possible mechanisms for long-lived, photo-induced superconductivity. Starting from a model of optically-driven Raman phonons coupled to inter-band electronic transitions, we develop a microscopic mechanism for photo-controlling the pairing interaction. Leveraging this mechanism, we first investigate long-lived superconductivity arising from the thermodynamic metastable trapping of the driven phonon. We then propose an alternative route, where the superconducting gap created by an optical drive leads to a dynamical bottleneck in the equilibration of quasi-particles. We conclude by discussing implications of both scenarios for experiments that can be used to discriminate between them. Our work provides falsifiable explanations for the nanosecond-scale photo-induced superconductivity found in K3C60, while simultaneously offering a theoretical basis for exploring metastable superconductivity in other quantum materials.