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Energy dependence of the electron-boson coupling strength in the electron-doped cuprate superconductor Pr1.85Ce0.15CuO4δ

M. Beck, M. Klammer, I. Rousseau, M. Obergfell, P. Leiderer, M. Helm, V. V. Kabanov, I. Diamant, A. Rabinowicz, Y. Dagan, and J. Demsar
Phys. Rev. B 95, 085106 – Published 3 February 2017

Abstract

The quest for a pairing boson in cuprate high-temperature superconductors is one of the outstanding tasks of solid-state physics. Numerous time-resolved studies of pair breaking, related to pairing by time-reversal symmetry, have been performed using femtosecond optical pulses. By considering energy relaxation pathways between charge, spin, and lattice degrees of freedom, evidence for both phonon and antiferromagnetic fluctuation-mediated pairing has been obtained. Here we present a study of the superconducting-state depletion process in an electron-doped cuprate Pr1.85Ce0.15CuO4δ, where the superconducting gap is smaller than the energy of relevant bosonic excitations. When pumping with above-gap terahertz pulses, we find that the absorbed energy density required to deplete superconductivity, Adep, matches the thermodynamic condensation energy. On the contrary, by near-infrared pumping, Adep is an order of magnitude higher, as in the case of hole-doped, large-gap cuprates. These results imply that only a small subset of bosons, which are generated during the relaxation of optically excited carriers, contributes to pairing. This observation implies that, contrary to the common assumptions, electron-boson coupling in cuprates is strongly energy dependent.

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  • Received 20 October 2016
  • Revised 18 January 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.95.085106

©2017 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

M. Beck1, M. Klammer1, I. Rousseau1, M. Obergfell1,2, P. Leiderer1, M. Helm3,4, V. V. Kabanov5, I. Diamant6, A. Rabinowicz6, Y. Dagan6, and J. Demsar1,2,*

  • 1Department of Physics and Center for Applied Photonics, University of Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany
  • 2Institute of Physics, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, 55128 Mainz, Germany
  • 3Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, P.O. Box 510119, 01314 Dresden, Germany
  • 4Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany
  • 5Jozef Stefan Institute,1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
  • 6Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel

  • *demsar@uni-mainz.de

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Issue

Vol. 95, Iss. 8 — 15 February 2017

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