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The Higgs mode in disordered superconductors close to a quantum phase transition

Nature Physics volume 11, pages 188–192 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

The concept of mass generation by means of the Higgs mechanism was strongly inspired by earlier works on the Meissner–Ochsenfeld effect in superconductors. In quantum field theory, the excitations of longitudinal components of the Higgs field manifest as massive Higgs bosons. The analogous Higgs mode in superconductors has not yet been observed owing to its rapid decay into particle–hole pairs. According to recent theories, however, the Higgs mode should decrease below the superconducting pairing gap 2Δ and become visible in two-dimensional systems close to the superconductor–insulator transition. For experimental verification, we measured the complex terahertz transmission and tunnelling density of states of various thin films of superconducting NbN and InO close to criticality. Comparing both techniques reveals a growing discrepancy between the finite 2Δ and the threshold energy for electromagnetic absorption, which vanishes critically towards the superconductor–insulator transition. We identify the excess absorption below 2Δ as strong evidence of the Higgs mode in two-dimensional quantum critical superconductors.

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Figure 1: Broken U(1)-symmetry phase and quantum Monte Carlo calculation of the Higgs conductivity.
Figure 2: Tunnelling versus optical spectroscopy.
Figure 3: Higgs conductivity and spectral weight.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for useful discussions with D. Arovas, L. Benfatto, S. Gazit, D. Podolsky and E. Shimshoni. We acknowledge support from the the GIF foundation grant I-1250-303.10/2014 and from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. U.S.P. acknowledges financial support from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. B.G. acknowledges support from the Russian Ministry of Education and Science (Program 5 top 100) and A.A. acknowledges support from the ISF and BSF foundations. M.S. acknowledges support from the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and N.T. acknowledges support from grant DOE DE-FG02-07ER46423 (N.T.) and computational support from the Ohio Supercomputing Center.

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Author notes

  1. Daniel Sherman

    Present address: Present address: Center for Quantum Devices, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark.,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel

    Daniel Sherman, Shachaf Poran & Aviad Frydman

  2. 1. Physikalisches Institut, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 57, 70550 Stuttgart, Germany

    Daniel Sherman, Uwe S. Pracht, Boris Gorshunov, Marc Scheffler & Martin Dressel

  3. Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, 141700 Dolgoprudny, Moscow Region, Russia

    Boris Gorshunov

  4. Prokhorov Institute of General Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Vavilov Street 38 119991 Moscow, Russia,

    Boris Gorshunov

  5. Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Homi Bhabha Road Colaba, Mumbai 400005, India,

    John Jesudasan, Madhavi Chand & Pratap Raychaudhuri

  6. Department of Physics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA

    Mason Swanson & Nandini Trivedi

  7. Physics Department, Technion, 32000 Haifa, Israel

    Assa Auerbach

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Contributions

D.S., J.J., M.C. and P.R. carried out the DC experiments. D.S., U.S.P. and B.G. carried out the THz experiments. D.S., U.S.P. and A.F. analysed the data. D.S., S.P., J.J. and P.R. prepared the samples. N.T., M.S. and A.A. carried out the theoretical analysis and the numerical simulations. U.S.P., D.S., M.D., A.F., M.S., N.T. and A.A. wrote the paper. A.F. and M.D. initiated and supervised the work. All the authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aviad Frydman.

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Sherman, D., Pracht, U., Gorshunov, B. et al. The Higgs mode in disordered superconductors close to a quantum phase transition. Nature Phys 11, 188–192 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3227

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