The non-equilibrium state of the high-Tc superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+delta and its ultrafast dynamics have been investigated by femtosecond time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy well below the critical temperature. We probe optically e
xcited quasiparticles at different electron momenta along the Fermi surface and detect metastable quasiparticles near the antinode. Their decay through e-e scattering is blocked by a phase space restricted to the nodal region. The lack of momentum dependence in the decay rates is in agreement with relaxation dominated by Cooper pair recombination in a boson bottleneck limit.
