Infrared nano-spectroscopy and imaging of collective superfluid excitations in conventional and high-temperature superconductors

TL;DR

This paper explores how near-field infrared spectroscopy can measure superconducting properties and image collective excitations with nanoscale resolution in both conventional and high-temperature superconductors.

Contribution

It demonstrates the potential of near-field techniques to measure superconducting energy gaps, superfluid densities, and collective mode dispersions at nanoscale resolution.

Findings

Near-field spectroscopy can measure the superconducting energy gap.

It can determine the c-axis superfluid density in layered superconductors.

Imaging superfluid surface modes reveals collective excitations with sub-diffraction resolution.

Abstract

We investigate near-field infrared spectroscopy and superfluid polariton imaging experiments on conventional and unconventional superconductors. Our modeling shows that near-field spectroscopy can measure the magnitude of the superconducting energy gap in Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer-like superconductors with nanoscale spatial resolution. We demonstrate how the same technique can measure the c-axis plasma frequency, and thus the c-axis superfluid density, of layered unconventional superconductors with a similar spatial resolution. Our modeling also shows that near-field techniques can image superfluid surface mode interference patterns near physical and electronic boundaries. We describe how these images can be used to extract the collective mode dispersion of anisotropic superconductors with sub-diffractional spatial resolution.