TeraHertz Josephson Plasmonics: Controlling Supercurrents in Cuprates

Abstract

HIGH intensity pulses of TeraHertz radiation have been extensively used by our group to drive quantum solids, revealing a number of non-equilibrium physical phenomena, and switching between different stable phases and sometimes revealing hidden states not observed at equilibrium. Examples include rectification ^1,2, harmonic generation and parametric amplification³ of optical phonons⁴, the optical enhancement of superconducting coherence ^5,6, switching of ferroelectricity ^7,8, of magnetic order ^9,10and metal insulator transitions¹¹.