Project description
Terahertz radiation could shed more light on collective excitations in unconventional superconductors
Developing a practical room-temperature superconductor is the holy grail of condensed matter physics. In addition to their plethora of potential applications, superconductors present a playground for future single-chip terahertz technologies. Near-field terahertz imaging could offer new insight into superconducting nonlinear excitations: terahertz radiation represents a peculiar energy scale of important condensed matter excitations, which renders them an indispensable probe for electron–electron coupling mechanisms in unconventional correlated systems. Funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the SUPERTERA project plans to apply near-field imaging techniques to investigate the terahertz responses of certain superconducting systems at the nanoscale, such as high-temperature superconducting layered cuprates and twisted bilayer graphene.
Objective
Superconducting materials are the heart of the modern quantum technologies including quantum computation with its main workhorse - superconducting qubits, magnetic flux and voltage quantum metrology with Josephson junctions and superconducting quantum interference devices. Hence the formidable effort to raise the superconducting transition temperature by researching new materials and superconductivity mechanisms beyond the standard Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) model. On the other hand, the new superconductivity-based technologies emerge as the phenomenon is becoming more investigated and better understood. The coupling of THz frequency electromagnetic waves with superconducting matter and the emerging possibility of THz field generation, manipulation and detection via light-matter interactions in superconductors is the prime example . Superconductors present a wide playground for the future single-chip THz technology due to the rich electromagnetic response involving nonlinear processes.
While the far-field THz nonlinearities in superconductors are being extensively studied for THz applications, the near-field nonlinear THz imaging would provide an insight to the superconducting excitations inaccessible in the linear regime and with high spatiotemporal resolution. In fact, the THz-frequency electromagnetic radiation represents a peculiar energy scale of important condensed matter excitations - interaction mediators in correlated electron systems (e.g. phonons for Cooper pairs in BCS superconductors), making them an indispensable probe for other electron - electron coupling mechanisms in unconventional correlated systems.
This project is aimed at (i) implementation of a nonlinear spatiotemporal near-field imaging technique, and its application to the investigation of nanoscale-picosecond THz response of the two fascinating superconducting systems: (ii) high-Tc layered cuprates, (iii) the magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologynanotechnologynano-materialstwo-dimensional nanostructuresgraphene
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringcomputer hardwarequantum computers
- natural sciencesphysical scienceselectromagnetism and electronicssuperconductivity
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EFCoordinator
08860 Castelldefels
Spain