TY - GEN A1 - Fiore, Jacopo A1 - Sellati, Niccolò A1 - Gabriele, Francesco A1 - Castellani, Claudio A1 - Seibold, Götz A1 - Udina, Mattia A1 - Benfatto, Lara T1 - Investigating Josephson plasmons in layered cuprates via nonlinear terahertz spectroscopy T2 - Physical Review B N2 - Josephson plasmons in layered superconductors represent a natural source of optical nonlinearity, thanks to their intrinsically anharmonic nature. Here we derive the selection rules behind nonlinear plasmonics showing its dependence on plasmonic branches hidden to other spectroscopies, such as RIXS. We benchmark our results for the case of layered cuprates, showing how in a layered system the combined effect of plasmon dispersion and light polarization can move the resonance of the bilayer system away from the plasma edge measured in linear spectroscopy. Our results demonstrate the dependence of the nonlinear THz response on the convoluted plasmon dispersion in a momentum region complementary to RIXS, and offer a possible perspective for the generation of THz pulses by artificially designed Josephson heterostructures. KW - Research Areas Josephson effect KW - Plasmons KW - Superconducting fluctuations KW - Superconductors KW - Cuprates KW - Terahertz spectroscopy Y1 - 2024 UR - https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.110.L060504 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.110.L060504 VL - 110 SP - 1 EP - 6 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Benfatto, Lara A1 - Castellani, Claudio A1 - Seibold, Götz T1 - Linear and nonlinear current response in disordered d-wave superconductors T2 - Physical Review B N2 - We present a detailed theoretical investigation of the linear and nonlinear optical response in a model system for a disordered d-wave superconductor. By evaluating the quasiparticle contribution (BCS response) we show that for both quantities the gap symmetry considerably changes the paradigm of the optical response as compared to the conventional s-wave case. For what concerns the linear response our findings agree with previous work showing that in strongly disordered d-wave superconductors a large fraction of uncondensed spectral weight survives below Tc, making the optical absorption around the gap-frequency scale almost unchanged with respect to the normal state. Our numerical results are in excellent quantitative agreement with experiments in overdoped cuprates. In the nonlinear regime we focus on the third-harmonic generation (THG), finding that, as already established for the s-wave case, in general a large THG is triggered by disorder-activated paramagnetic processes. However, in the d-wave case the BCS response is monotonously increasing in frequency, losing any signature of THG enhancement when the THz pump frequency ω matches the gap maximum Δ, a hallmark of previous experiments in conventional s-wave superconductors. Our findings, along with the mild polarization dependence of the response, provide an explanation for recent THG measurements in cuprates, setting the framework for the theoretical understanding of nonlinear effects in unconventional cuprates. KW - Superconducting order parameter KW - Superfluid density KW - High-temperature superconductors KW - Superconductivity KW - Drude model KW - Numerical techniques KW - Reflectivity KW - Terahertz spectroscopy Y1 - 2023 UR - https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.108.134508 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.108.134508 SN - 2469-9969 SN - 2469-9950 VL - 108 SP - 134508-1 EP - 134508-15 ER -