Dispersion of plasmons in three-dimensional superconductors

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the dispersion and lifetime of plasmons in three-dimensional superconductors are affected by the superconducting gap and plasma frequency, revealing anomalous behaviors and resonance phenomena near the pair-breaking threshold.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of plasmon behavior in 3D superconductors when plasma frequency is comparable to the gap, including non-perturbative treatment of plasmon-fermion coupling.

Findings

Plasmons exhibit negative dispersion at high plasma frequencies.

A broadened plasma resonance coexists with an undamped mode inside the gap.

Multiple poles in the propagator lead to resonance splitting.

Abstract

We study the plasma branch of an homogeneous three-dimensional electron gas in an $s$-wave superconducting state. We focus on the regime where the plasma frequency $\omega_p$ is comparable to the gap $\Delta$, which is experimentally realized in cuprates. Although a sum rule guarantees that the departure of the plasma branch always coincides with the plasma frequency, the dispersion and lifetime of the plasmons is strongly affected by the presence of the pair condensate, especially at energies close to the pair-breaking threshold $2\Delta$. When $\omega_p $ is above $1.7\Delta $, the level repulsion is strong enough to give the plasma branch an anomalous, negative dispersion with a minimum at finite wavelength. At non-zero temperature and at $\omega_p>2\Delta$, we treat in a non-perturbative way the coupling of plasmons to the fermionic excitations, and show that a broadened plasma resonance inside the pair-breaking continuum coexists with an undamped solution in the band gap. This resonance splitting is associated with the presence of multiple poles in the analytic continuation of the propagator of the Cooper pairs.