RESUMO
Despite extensive work on high-temperature superconductors, the critical behavior of an incipient condensate has so far been studied exclusively under equilibrium conditions. Here, we excite Bi(2)Sr(2)CaCu(2)O(8+δ) with a femtosecond laser pulse and monitor the subsequent nonequilibrium dynamics of the midinfrared conductivity. Our data allow us to discriminate temperature regimes where superconductivity is either coherent, fluctuating or vanishingly small. Above the transition temperature T(c), we make the striking observation that the relaxation to equilibrium exhibits power-law dynamics and scaling behavior, both for optimally and underdoped superconductors. Our findings can in part be modeled using time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau theory, and they provide strong indication of universality in systems far from equilibrium.
RESUMO
A versatile experimental setup for femtosecond time-resolved ellipsometry and magneto-optical Kerr effect measurements in the visible light range is described. The apparatus is based on the pump-probe technique and combines a broad-band probing beam with an intense near-infrared pump. According to Fresnel scattering matrix formalism, the analysis of the reflected beam at different polarization states of the incident probe light allows one to determine the diagonal and the off-diagonal elements of the dielectric tensor in the investigated sample. Moreover, the pump-probe method permits to study the dynamics of the dielectric response after a short and intense optical excitation. The performance of the experimental apparatus is tested on CrO2 single crystals as a benchmark.