Journal article
Evidence for metastable photo-induced superconductivity in K3C60
- Abstract:
- Excitation of high-Tc cuprates and certain organic superconductors with intense far-infrared optical pulses has been shown to create non-equilibrium states with optical properties that are consistent with transient high-temperature superconductivity. These non-equilibrium phases have been generated using femtosecond drives, and have been observed to disappear immediately after excitation, which is evidence of states that lack intrinsic rigidity. Here we make use of a new optical device to drive metallic K3C60 with mid-infrared pulses of tunable duration, ranging between one picosecond and one nanosecond. The same superconducting-like optical properties observed over short time windows for femtosecond excitation are shown here to become metastable under sustained optical driving, with lifetimes in excess of ten nanoseconds. Direct electrical probing, which becomes possible at these timescales, yields a vanishingly small resistance with the same relaxation time as that estimated by terahertz conductivity. We provide a theoretical description of the dynamics after excitation, and justify the observed slow relaxation by considering randomization of the order-parameter phase as the rate-limiting process that determines the decay of the light-induced superconductor.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 2.1MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41567-020-01148-1
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Physics More from this journal
- Volume:
- 17
- Issue:
- 5
- Pages:
- 611-618
- Publication date:
- 2021-02-04
- Acceptance date:
- 2020-12-11
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1745-2481
- ISSN:
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1745-2473
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1162842
- Local pid:
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pubs:1162842
- Deposit date:
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2023-04-21
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Budden et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- Copyright © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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