Non-equilibrium anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy for investigating Higgs modes in superconductors
Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
Even before its role in electroweak symmetry breaking, the Anderson-Higgs mechanism was introduced to explain the Meissner effect in superconductors. Spontaneous symmetry-breaking yields massless phase modes representing the low-energy excitations of the Mexican-Hat potential. Only in superconductors the phase mode is shifted towards higher energies owing to the gauge field of the charged condensate. This results in a low-energy excitation spectrum governed by the Higgs mode. Consequently, the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer-like Meissner effect signifies a macroscopic quantum condensate in which a photon acquires mass, representing a one-to-one analogy to high-energy physics. We report on an innovative spectroscopic technique to study symmetries and energies of the Higgs modes in the high-temperature superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 after a soft quench of the Mexican-Hat potential. Population inversion induced by an initial laser pulse leads to an additional anti-Stokes Raman-scattering signal, which is consistent with polarization-dependent Higgs modes. Within Ginzburg-Landau theory, the Higgs-mode energy is connected to the Cooper-pair coherence length. Within a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer weak-coupling model we develop a quantitative and coherent description of single-particle and two-particle channels. This opens the avenue for Higgs Spectroscopy in quantum condensates and provides a unique pathway to control and explore Higgs physics.
Details
| Original language | English |
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| Article number | 7027 |
| Journal | Nature communications |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - 30 Jul 2025 |
| Peer-reviewed | Yes |
External IDs
| PubMed | 40744925 |
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| ORCID | /0000-0001-9862-2788/work/191533885 |