Optical Enhancement of Superconductivity via Targeted Destruction of Charge Density Waves

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel optical method to enhance superconductivity by selectively destroying charge density waves, which compete with superconductivity, using resonant excitation of collective modes in hybrid systems.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach to boost superconductivity through targeted optical destruction of charge density waves, supported by a proposed experimental setup.

Findings

Resonant excitation can melt charge density wave order

Suppression of BDW enhances Cooper pairing

Hybrid 2D plasmon-polariton systems enable this optical control

Abstract

It has been experimentally established that the occurrence of charge density waves is a common feature of various under-doped cuprate superconducting compounds. The observed states, which are often found in the form of bond density waves (BDW), often occur in a temperature regime immediately above the superconducting transition temperature. Motivated by recent optical experiments on superconducting materials, where it has been shown that optical irradiation can transiently improve the superconducting features, here, we propose a new approach for the enhancement of superconductivity by the targeted destruction of the BDW order. Since BDW states are usually found in competition with superconductivity, suppression of the BDW order enhances the tendency of electrons to form Cooper pairs after reaching a steady-state. By investigating the optical coupling of gapless, collective fluctuations of the BDW modes, we argue that the resonant excitation of these modes can melt the underlying BDW order parameter. We propose an experimental setup to implement such an optical coupling using 2D plasmon-polariton hybrid systems.