Electrodynamical Properties of High Tc Superconductors Studied with Polarized Angle Resolved Infrared Spectroscopy

TL;DR

This paper investigates the electrodynamical properties of high Tc superconductors using polarized infrared spectroscopy, focusing on c-axis plasmons and phonons to understand their anisotropic behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a method to study c-axis dynamical properties of high Tc superconductors using grazing incidence polarized infrared spectroscopy, enabling analysis of small or irregular samples.

Findings

Identification of c-axis plasmons and phonons

Enhanced understanding of anisotropic electrodynamics

Method for studying small single crystals

Abstract

Using infrared spectroscopy at grazing angle of incidence we study the electrodynamical properties of high temperature superconductors. We review some of our experiments where transverse polarized light is absorbed by longitudinal optical modes with their mode of oscillation perpendicular to the plane. This is particularly useful for the study of the plasmons and phonons perpendicular to the plane, and allows us to study in detail the c-axis dynamical properties of flux grown single crystals for which usually no samples with large dimensions in the c-direction exist.