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

Daniel Sherman; Uwe S. Pracht; Boris Gorshunov; Shachaf Poran; John Jesudasan; Madhavi Chand; Pratap Raychaudhuri; Mason Swanson; Nandini Trivedi; Assa Auerbach; Marc Scheffler; Aviad Frydman; Martin Dressel

doi:10.1038/nphys3227

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

Daniel Sherman
, Uwe S. Pracht
, Boris Gorshunov
, Shachaf Poran
, John Jesudasan
, Madhavi Chand
, Pratap Raychaudhuri
, Mason Swanson
, Nandini Trivedi
, Assa Auerbach
, Marc Scheffler
, Aviad Frydman
, Martin Dressel

Bar-Ilan University
University of Stuttgart
University of Copenhagen
Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology
RAS - General Physics Institute
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Ohio State University
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

162 Scopus citations

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.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	188-192
Number of pages	5
Journal	Nature Physics
Volume	11
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3227
State	Published - 1 Jan 2015

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited.

Funding

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.

Funders	Funder number
BSF foundations
GIF foundation	I-1250-303.10/2014
Ohio Supercomputing Center
National Science Foundation
U.S. Department of Energy	DE-FG02-07ER46423
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation
Israel Science Foundation
Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes

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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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AU - Frydman, Aviad

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

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