Monday, January 17, 2011

Light-Induced Superconductivity

This is a very fascinating report on the ability to induced superconductivity in an insulating cuprate compound.

D. Fausti et al., "Light-Induced Superconductivity in a Stripe-Ordered Cuprate", Science v.331, p.189 (2011).

Abstract: 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 La1.675Eu0.2Sr0.125CuO4, 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.

A brief news report on this work can be found here. At the very end, there is a comment in which, I think, the whole issue of superconductivity in the cuprates rests upon. It should at least address the question if the stripe phase is playing any role in the origin of superconductivity in this class of material.

‘There is a school of thought that it should be possible to achieve superconductivity at much higher temperatures, but that some competing type of order in the material gets in the way,’ said Prof Cavalleri. ‘We should be able to explore this idea and see if we can disrupt the competing order to reveal superconductivity at higher temperatures. It’s certainly worth trying.’

Zz.

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