No Arabic abstract
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 superconductors effective coupling function, leading to a massive Cooper pair breakup. The effect was evident for several YBCO thin films on MgO and LSAT substrates.
The preformed-pairs theory of pseudogap physics in high-$T_C$ superconductors predicts a nonanalytic $T$-dependence for the $ab$-plane superfluid fraction, $rho_S$, at low temperatures in underdoped cuprates. We report high-precision measurements of $rho_S(T)$ on severely underdoped YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{6+x}$ and Y$_{0.8}$Ca$_{0.2}$Ba$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{6+x}$ films. At low $T$, $rho_S$ looks more like $1 - T^2$ than $1 - T^{3/2}$, in disagreement with theory.
We investigate the stability of spatially uniform solutions for the collisionless dynamics of a fermionic superfluid. We demonstrate that, if the system size is larger than the superfluid coherence length, the solution characterized by a periodic in time order parameter is unstable with respect to spatial fluctuations. The instability is due to the parametric excitations of pairing modes with opposite momenta. The growth of spatial modulations is suppressed by nonlinear effects resulting in a state characterized by a random superposition of wave packets of the superfluid order parameter. We suggest that this state can be probed by spectroscopic noise measurements.
This paper is devoted to an analysis of the experiment by Nakamura {it et al.} (Nature {bf 398}, 786 (1999)) on the quantum state control in Josephson junctions devices. By considering the relevant processes involved in the detection of the charge state of the box and a realistic description of the gate pulse we are able to analyze some aspects of the experiment (like the amplitude of the measurement current) in a quantitative way.
Quantum evolution of particles under strong fields can be essentially captured by a small number of quantum trajectories that satisfy the stationary phase condition in the Dirac-Feynmann path integrals. The quantum trajectories are the key concept to understand extreme nonlinear optical phenomena, such as high-order harmonic generation (HHG), above-threshold ionization (ATI), and high-order terahertz sideband generation (HSG). While HHG and ATI have been mostly studied in atoms and molecules, the HSG in semiconductors can have interesting effects due to possible nontrivial vacuum states of band materials. We find that in a semiconductor with non-vanishing Berry curvature in its energy bands, the cyclic quantum trajectories of an electron-hole pair under a strong terahertz field can accumulate Berry phases. Taking monolayer MoS$_2$ as a model system, we show that the Berry phases appear as the Faraday rotation angles of the pulse emission from the material under short-pulse excitation. This finding reveals an interesting transport effect in the extreme nonlinear optics regime.
The advent of quantum optical techniques based on superconducting circuits has opened new regimes in the study of the non-linear interaction of light with matter. Of particular interest has been the creation of non-classical states of light, which are essential for continuous-variable quantum information processing, and could enable quantum-enhanced measurement sensitivity. Here we demonstrate a device consisting of a superconducting artificial atom, the Cooper pair transistor, embedded in a superconducting microwave cavity that may offer a path toward simple, continual production of non-classical photons. By applying a dc voltage to the atom, we use the ac Josephson effect to inject photons into the cavity. The backaction of the photons on single-Cooper-pair tunneling events results in a new regime of simultaneous quantum coherent transport of Cooper pairs and microwave photons. This single-pair Josephson laser offers great potential for the production of amplitude-squeezed photon states and a rich environment for the study of the quantum dynamics of nonlinear systems.