Enhancement of superconductivity with external phonon squeezing

TL;DR

This paper explores how external phonon squeezing combined with phonon pumping can enhance superconductivity by increasing electron-electron attraction through interference effects, especially near lattice instability boundaries.

Contribution

It introduces a novel phase-sensitive mechanism for boosting boson-mediated interactions using external squeezing and phonon pumping.

Findings

Interference between external squeezing and phonon pumping enhances electron-electron attraction.

Maximum superconductivity enhancement occurs near dynamical lattice instability boundaries.

Proposed experimental platforms for implementing phonon squeezing to improve superconductivity.

Abstract

Squeezing of phonons due to the non-linear coupling to electrons is a way to enhance superconductivity as theoretically studied in a recent work [Kennes et al. Nature Physics 13, 479 (2017)]. We study quadratic electron-phonon interaction in the presence of phonon pumping and an additional external squeezing. Interference between these two driving sources induces a phase-sensitive enhancement of electron-electron attraction, which we find as a generic mechanism to enhance any boson-mediated interactions. The strongest enhancement of superconductivity is shown to be on the boundary with the dynamical lattice instabilities caused by driving. We propose several experimental platforms to realize our scheme.