English

Josephson surface plasmons in spatially confined cuprate superconductors

Superconductivity 2013-11-20 v2

Abstract

In this work, we generalize the theory of localized surface plasmons to the case of high-Tc cuprate superconductors, spatially confined in the form of small spherical particles. At variance from ordinary metals, cuprate superconductors are characterized by a low-energy bulk excitation known as the Josephson plasma wave (JPW), arising from interlayer tunneling of the condensate along the c-axis. The effect of the JPW is revealed in a characteristic spectrum of surface excitations, which we call Josephson surface plasmons. Our results, which apply to any material with a strongly anisotropic electromagnetic response, are worked out in detail for the case of multilayered superconductors supporting both low-frequency (acoustic) and transverse-optical JPW. Spatial confinement of the Josephson plasma waves may represent a new degree of freedom to engineer their frequencies and to explore the link between interlayer tunnelling and high-Tc superconductivity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1305.4579,
  title  = {Josephson surface plasmons in spatially confined cuprate superconductors},
  author = {Filippo Alpeggiani and Lucio Claudio Andreani},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1305.4579},
  year   = {2013}
}