Pair-breaking and superconducting state recovery dynamics in MgB2.
We present studies of the photoexcited quasiparticle dynamics in MgB2 where, using femtosecond optical techniques, Cooper pair-breaking dynamics (PBD) have been temporally resolved for the first time. The PBD are strongly temperature and photoexcitation intensity dependent. Analysis of the PBD using the Rothwarf-Taylor equations suggests that the anomalous PBD arises from the fact that in MgB2 photoexcitation is initially followed by energy relaxation to high frequency phonons instead of, as commonly assumed, e-e thermalization. Furthermore, the bare quasiparticle recombination rate and the probability for pair breaking by phonons have been determined.
Demsar
J
J
Los Alamos National Laboratory, MST-10, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA.
Averitt
R D
RD
Taylor
A J
AJ
Kabanov
V V
VV
Kang
W N
WN
Kim
H J
HJ
Choi
E M
EM
Lee
S I
SI