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Nanophotonics 1 (2012): 117–123 © 2012 by Walter de Gruyter • Berlin • Boston. DOI 10.

1515/nanoph-2012-0007

Optical tuning and ultrafast dynamics of high-temperature


superconducting terahertz metamaterials

Ranjan Singh1,*, Jie Xiong1,2, Abul K. Azad1, Keywords: Metamaterials; terahertz; high-temperature
Hao Yang1,3, Stuart A. Trugman1, Q. X. Jia1, superconductor; split-ring resonator; photoexcitation;
Antoinette J. Taylor1 and Hou-Tong Chen1,* ultrafast dynamics.
1
Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Los Alamos
National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, 1. Introduction
USA, e-mail: ranjan@lanl.gov; chenht@lanl.gov
2
State Key Lab of Electronic Thin Films and Integrated An important issue in resonant electromagnetic metamateri-
Devices, University of Electronic Science and Technology of als is how to overcome the loss, particularly in the optical
China, Chengdu 610054, China frequency range where the Drude response provides limited
3
Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Thin Films, School of Physical conductivity in metals [1–3]. However, one may also take
Science and Technology, Soochow University, Suzhou advantage of the typically undesirable loss to realize function-
215006, China alities such as switching and modulation of electromagnetic
* Corresponding author waves [4], where the metamaterial resonant response plays a
critical role in obtaining strong enhancement of light-matter
interactions. Based on such considerations, there have been
Abstract many approaches developed to realize tunability in hybrid
metamaterials, where materials including semiconductors and
Through the integration of semiconductors or complex complex oxides serve as the metamaterial substrate or spacer,
oxides into metal resonators, tunable metamaterials have or are integrated into specific regions of metamaterial resona-
been achieved by a change of environment using an external tors [5–25]. The resonant response in hybrid metamaterials
stimulus. Metals provide high conductivity to realize a strong can be switched and/or frequency shifted when an external
resonant response in metamaterials; however, they contrib- stimulus, such as temperature [5–8], voltage bias [9–14], or
ute very little to the tunability. The complex conductivity in photoexcitation [15–25], is applied. The optical approach has
high-temperature superconducting films is highly sensitive to received the most intensive attention in metamaterial photon-
external perturbations, which provides new opportunities in ics due to its simplicity, addressability, and capability of ultra-
achieving tunable metamaterials resulting directly from the fast tuning. However, in all of these approaches, the metals
resonant elements. Additionally, superconducting metama- that compose metamaterial resonators contribute very little to
terials are expected to enable strong nonlinear response and the active components, merely providing high conductivity to
quantum effects, particularly when Josephson junctions are realize a strong resonance.
integrated into the metamaterial resonant elements. Here we It has been shown that metal conductivity as well as thick-
demonstrate ultrafast dynamical tuning of resonance in the ness can affect the metamaterial resonance [26, 27], although
terahertz (THz) frequency range in YBa2Cu3O7-δ (YBCO) the tunability is through design and fabrication. Noble metals
split-ring resonator (SRR) arrays excited by near infrared are still the material of choice for fabricating metamaterial
femtosecond laser pulses. The photoexcitation breaks the structures because of their high conductivity, which, how-
superconducting Cooper pairs to create quasiparticles. This ever, makes the resonance tuning rely on the integration of
dramatically modifies the imaginary part of the complex con- additional materials able to respond to external stimuli. The
ductivity and consequently the metamaterial resonance on complex conductivity in high-temperature superconducting
an ultrafast timescale, although the real conductivity does films is highly sensitive to external perturbations, including
not change significantly. We observed resonance switching temperature, magnetic fields, optical excitation, and electrical
accompanied by substantial frequency tuning as a function of current. In fact, there have been a few recent demonstrations
photoexcitation fluence, which also strongly depends on the of superconducting metamaterials, which are of particular
nanoscale thickness of the superconducting films. All of our interest in loss reduction and resonance tuning [28–38], the
experimental results agree with calculations using an analyti- latter has mostly been achieved by a change of temperature
cal model, which takes into account the contributions of the [28–34, 37, 38] and application of magnetic fields [30, 35],
complex conductivity of the YBCO films to SRR resistance two approaches that are uniquely suitable for manipulation
and kinetic inductance. The theoretical calculations reveal of properties in superconductors. Although loss reduction in
that the increasing SRR resistance upon increasing photoex- superconducting metamaterials is limited to frequencies up
citation fluence is responsible for the reduction of resonance to the terahertz (THz) regime due to the strong frequency
strength, and changes in both the resistance and kinetic induc- dependence of the complex conductivity as well as the energy
tance cause the resonance frequency shifts. band gap in superconductors, superconducting metamaterials

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118 R. Singh et al.: Optical tuning and ultrafast dynamics of high-temperature superconducting terahertz metamaterials

are expected to have great potential for THz generation [39] 1.2
and detection [40], particularly when Josephson junctions are LAO
integrated into the structures.
In this work, we systematically investigate the resonant YBCO

Transmitted THz signal (a.u.)


response, its tuning and dynamics under ultrafast near infra- 1.1
red photoexcitation in planar high-temperature supercon- II
ducting THz metamaterials. The near infrared photons break 10 μm
the superconducting Cooper pairs to create quasiparticles, III
which dramatically modifies the imaginary part of the com- IV 300 mW
1.0 I
plex conductivity and consequently shifts the metamaterial
resonance frequency. We observed the resonance switching 50 mW
accompanied with significant frequency tuning as a function
of photoexcitation fluence, which also strongly depends on
the nanoscale thickness of the superconducting films. We 0.9
-5 0 5 10 15 20 25
investigated experimentally the dynamics of the metamate- Pump-probe time delay (ps)
rial resonance for various pump fluences, and the results are
compared to and reproduced by calculations using an analyti- Figure 1 Dynamics of the 100-nm-thick YBCO metamaterial upon
cal model [29, 34], which takes into account the contributions femtosecond near infrared photoexcitation. The transmitted THz
of the complex conductivity of the superconducting films to peak signal was measured as a function of pump-probe time delay
both the SRR resistance and kinetic inductance. This work at 20 K for 50 and 300 mW photoexcitation powers. Position I indi-
represents an important step towards nonlinear and quantum cates that the THz probe pulse has lower transmission due to the
strong resonant response of the metamaterial sample when it arrives
THz metamaterials to yield functionalities that are difficult
about 5 ps earlier than the optical pulse. At positions II, III and IV the
or impossible to achieve through conventional approaches in
THz pulse arrives after the optical excitation with different pump-
this technically challenging frequency range, as the supercon- probe time delays. Inset: a microscopic image of one unit cell of the
ducting films can naturally exhibit strong nonlinear response 100-nm-thick YBCO metamaterial. For all measurements the nor-
and additional quantum devices – Josephson junction – can be mally incident THz radiation has the electric field polarized along
integrated into the structures. one of the SRR arms (either in x or y direction).

2. Experiments and Results


difficult to precisely measure the sample temperature, due
Epitaxial YBa2Cu3O7-δ (YBCO) high-temperature super- to laser heating under high fluence photoexcitation, because
conducting films with δ = 0.05 and thicknesses of 50, 100, the temperature sensor has to be located at the copper sam-
and 200 nm were prepared using pulsed laser deposition ple holder rather than directly touching the top of sample
on (100) LaAlO3 (LAO) substrates with dimensions of to avoid the direct exposure to the pump laser. Variation of
10 mm×10 mm×0.5 mm, over which the thickness variation pump-probe time delay was realized using a motion stage
is < 3%. The transition temperature was determined to be to change the pump beam optical path. For various pump
Tc = 90 K by the ac susceptibility measurement, with a tran- powers and pump-probe time delays, THz pulses transmit-
sition width of ∼0.5 K. Square arrays of electric split-ring ting through the YBCO films and metamaterials, as well as a
resonators (SRRs) [41], with a unit cell microscopic image blank LAO substrate as the reference, were measured in the
shown in the inset to Figure 1, were fabricated from the time-domain, i.e., recording the time-varying electric field
YBCO films through conventional photolithographic meth- of the impulsive THz radiation. The transmission amplitude
ods and wet chemical etching using 0.01% H3PO4 solution and phase spectra were directly obtained by performing fast
for several minutes. However, we would like to point out Fourier transformation of the time-domain signal and nor-
that other types of SRR could also be used, i.e., the results in malized to that of the reference. The complex conductivity
this work do not depend on the choice of geometry of SRRs. of the YBCO films was extracted from the measured trans-
Under normal incidence, the YBCO films and metamaterials mission amplitude and phase spectra through the inversion
were characterized at a temperature of 20 K using an opti- of Fresnel equations [43].
cal-pump THz-probe (OPTP) spectrometer [16, 42] incor- Figure 1 shows the transmitted THz peak signal through a
porated with a continuous flow liquid helium cryostat. The 100-nm-thick YBCO metamaterial at 20 K as a function of
output near infrared laser beam (50 fs, 3.2 mJ/pulse at 800 time delay between the near infrared pump and THz probe
nm with a 1-kHz repetition rate) was split into two parts with pulses, for two example optical pump fluences of 0.05 and
one being used for THz generation-detection and the other 0.3 mJ/cm2, or powers of 50 and 300 mW, respectively. At
for optical excitation (pump) of the YBCO films or metama- low temperatures, the highly superconducting YBCO film
terial samples. The pump beam has a beam diameter of ∼1 results in strong resonant response in the metamaterial struc-
cm, much larger than the focused THz spot diameter of ∼3 ture, which causes a lower transmission of THz radiation. The
mm at the sample, providing mostly uniform excitation over near infrared photons break the superfluid Cooper pairs in the
the YBCO films and metamaterials. This, however, makes it superconducting YBCO films and create the quasiparticles

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R. Singh et al.: Optical tuning and ultrafast dynamics of high-temperature superconducting terahertz metamaterials 119

which dramatically reduce the conductivity and metamate- 1.0


rial resonance, and therefore increase the transmitted THz 0.8
signal starting from the pump-probe time zero shown in 0.6 500
Figure 1. The ∼2 ps rise time is mainly due to time duration 0.4
100
50
of the THz pulses, which limits the time resolution. When the A B

Transmission
0.2 10
pump-probe time delay increases, the transmitted THz signal 0
0.0
decreases due to the recombination of quasiparticles to form
0.8
Cooper pairs. Under low fluence excitation, the relaxation
0.6
time is approximately 5 ps, and there is a clearly observable
second peak ∼7 ps after the main transmission peak arising 0.4

from reflected laser pulses at the back surface of the substrate. 0.2 C D
Increasing the pump fluence causes a larger relaxation time 0.0
0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7
and results in a much longer tail, most likely due to thermal Frequency (THz)
effects. We have also carried out similar measurements for
1.0
bare YBCO films, and the results are very similar to those
shown in Figure 1.
The amplitude spectra of THz transmission through the 0.8
100-nm-thick metamaterial sample were then measured at
20 K for various photoexcitation fluences at four time delays Pump power (mW)
0.6
indicated by the arrows in Figure 1. In the absence of a pump 100
pulse, the metamaterial exhibits a strong resonant response, 0.4 60
as shown by the red curves in Figures 2A–2D with a resonant 30
transmission minimum of 10% or power transmission of 1%, 10
0.2
which is comparable to that in metamaterial samples fabri- 0
Transmission

cated from gold with the same thickness. This also facilitates E
0.0
the use of high-temperature superconductors in metamateri-
als replacing noble metals with additional tuning capability.
Figure 2A shows the resonant transmission spectra for various 0.8
pump powers when THz pulses pass through the metamate-
rial sample a few picoseconds before the optical pump pulses 0.6
Pump power (mW)
(time position I in Figure 1). The small resulting change 1000
indicates that the excitation in the YBCO metamaterial has 0.4 500
relaxed nearly completely during the time interval of 1 ms
200
between the optical pump pulses. Immediately following the
0.2 50
femtosecond photoexcitation (time position II), the metama-
0
terial resonance is significantly weakened and red-shifted F
0.0
with increasing pump power, as shown in Figure 2B. The 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
resonance disappears at a pump power of 100 mW. Increasing Frequency (THz)
the pump-probe time delay results in recovery of metamate-
rial resonance strength due to carrier relaxation, as revealed in Figure 2 THz transmission amplitude spectra of YBCO metama-
Figures 2C and 2D for positions III and IV, respectively, both terials for various pump powers. The spectra shown in A–D are for
of which are before the arrival of the reflected optical pulse the 100-nm-thick YBCO metamaterial at the respective pump-probe
from the back surface of the substrate. With the same pump time positions I–IV. E and F, THz transmission amplitude spectra for
YBCO metamaterials with 50 and 200 nm thicknesses, respectively,
power, the resonance strength increases and its frequency
measured at the pump-probe time position III.
shifts back when the time delay increases. However, when
the pump power is high, e.g., 500 mW, the thermal effects last
much longer and the metamaterial resonance does not recover YBCO film thickness results in a higher resonance fre-
within the time delay of tens picoseconds in our measure- quency, stronger resonance strength, smaller frequency tun-
ments, which is consistent with the dynamics measurements ing range, and requiring higher pump power in tuning the
shown in Figure 1. resonance. In the absence of a pump pulse, the resonance
It has been shown that the resonance tuning in supercon- frequency is 0.460, 0.553, and 0.612 THz, and the resonance
ducting metamaterials through change of temperature is transmission minimum is 0.28, 0.11, and 0.03, respectively,
strongly dependent on the film thickness [34]. We also fab- for the YBCO metamaterials with thickness of 50, 100, and
ricated identical metamaterial structure from YBCO films 200 nm. For the 50-nm-thick YBCO metamaterial, 100 mW
with two other thicknesses of 50 and 200 nm. Measured at pump laser power is sufficient to completely switch off the
the pump-probe time delay position III, the pump power resonance; while for the 200-nm-thick YBCO metamaterial,
dependent resonant transmission spectra are shown in even 1000 mW pump laser power is insufficient to switch
Figures 2E and 2F. These spectra reveal that increasing off the resonance.

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120 R. Singh et al.: Optical tuning and ultrafast dynamics of high-temperature superconducting terahertz metamaterials

3. Discussion the YBCO film, σ is the measured complex conductivity,


β = n2 ω / c0 is the complex propagation constant where c0 is
The complex conductivity plays an essential role in the the light velocity in vacuum, and d is the thickness of the
resonance tuning in high-temperature superconducting superconducting film. The surface resistance RS and reactance
metamaterials [34]. Figure 3 shows the complex conduc- XS = ωLS are shown in Figure 4 as a function of pump power
tivity at 0.55 THz of the 100-nm-thick YBCO film, mea- for the 100-nm-thick YBCO film, which are calculated at
sured at 20 K as a function of pump power at four different 0.55 THz and at different pump-probe time delays. The sur-
pump-probe time delays shown in Figure 1. When there is face resistance RS, which represents the loss, increases rapidly
no optical pump, the imaginary part is about one order of with pump power; while the surface reactance XS increases
magnitude higher than the real part. For time position I, first with lower pump power, reaches a maximum value, and
there is little change in the conductivity, shown in Figure then drops with further increasing pump power. As we com-
3A, with increasing pump power, which confirms that the 1 pare the results in Figures 3 and 4, it is interesting to find
ms time interval of the laser pulses is sufficient for nearly- that the maximum surface reactance, and therefore the maxi-
complete thermal relaxation. Shown in Figure 3B for the mal frequency tuning, occurs at a pump power where the real
pump-probe time position II, the imaginary conductiv- and imaginary parts of the complex conductivity are equal.
ity dramatically decreases by orders of magnitude as the However, this is not really surprising since it can be easily
superfluid Cooper pairs are broken into quasiparticles by verified using Eq. (1).
the near infrared photons, while the real conductivity does At resonance, the SRR reactance is absent and the sur-
not exhibit a significant change (at most a factor of 2) as it face resistance of the SRR layer can be calculated from
arises from the Drude response of quasiparticles. Shown in the YBCO surface resistance, R = [(A-g)/w]RS, where
Figures 3C and 3D for the pump-probe time positions III A = 64 μm is the circumference of the SRR current loop,
and IV, respectively, the imaginary conductivity increases g = 4 μm is the split gap width, and w = 4 μm is the strip
with increasing pump-probe time delay, which allows for width of the SRR. By treating the SRR layer as a shunt
recovery of the superfluid. resistor in a transmission line, the resonant transmission
There have been a few discussions that surface resistance minimum can then be calculated for the pump-probe time
and kinetic inductance contribute to resonance tuning in positions I–IV, with the results shown in Figures 5A–5D,
superconducting metamaterials [29, 34]. The surface imped- respectively. Compared to the experimental results, which
ance (in Ω/Square) of a superconducting film can be calcu- are also shown in Figure 5, there is good agreement, i.e.,
lated from the measured complex conductivity [34]: both the experiments and calculations reveal an increase
in resonant transmission minimum (decreasing resonance
n +in2 cot( β d ) Z 0
Z S =RS -iX S =Z 0 3 ≅i cot( β d ) (1) strength) with pump power.
n22 -n32 n2 The frequency of the fundamental resonance in SRRs is
typically given by ω0 =1/ LC , where L and C are the loop
where the “∼” indicates a complex value, Z0 = 377 Ω is the
inductance and gap capacitance, respectively. However, when
vacuum impedance, n3 = 4.8 is the LAO substrate refrac-
the ohmic loss is significant, the resistance R in an equivalent
tive index, n2 = iσ / ε0 ω is the complex refractive index of circuit of SRR has to be considered [34]:

4
A B 20
A B
Surface resistance/reactance (Ω/Sq.)

3
XS
Imaginary
2 RS
Conductivity (106 S/m)

Real 10
1

0 0
C D 20 C D
3

2
10
1

0 0
0 100 200 300 400 0 100 200 300 400 500 0 100 200 300 400 0 100 200 300 400 500
Pump power (mW) Pump power (mW)

Figure 3 Experimentally measured complex conductivity at 20 Figure 4 Calculated surface impedance as a function of pump
K as a function of pump power for the 100-nm-thick bare YBCO power for the 100-nm-thick bare YBCO film. A–D, The surface
film. A–D, Real and imaginary parts of the complex conductiv- resistance and reactance are calculated using the experimental con-
ity are retrieved at 0.55 THz for pump-probe time positions I–IV, ductivity shown in Figure 3 for the respective pump-probe time posi-
respectively. tions I–IV.

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R. Singh et al.: Optical tuning and ultrafast dynamics of high-temperature superconducting terahertz metamaterials 121

1 R2 Certainly, the complex conductivity in YBCO films is fre-


ω20 = - . (2) quency dependent, in contrast to the assumption of frequen-
LC 4 L2
cy-independent conductivity taken at the resonance frequency
In superconducting SRRs, the inductance L includes two in the above model calculations. However, this assumption
contributions: Faraday inductance LF which is determined and does not affect the validity of this model because the change
can be estimated by the geometry and dimensions of the SRR of conductivity is not significant in the relatively small fre-
[44], and kinetic inductance Lk = [(A-g)/w](XS/ω) which is quency range around the resonance. Finally, the above model
associated with the kinetic energy in superconducting charge can also explain the thickness dependent YBCO metamaterial
carriers. The capacitance C can be derived using Eq. (2) from resonance and tuning shown in Figure 6. Although the thick-
simulated resonance frequency ω′0 when assuming perfect ness may affect the conductivity of the superconducting films,
conducting SRR, i.e., L = LF, R = 0, and therefore C =(ω′02 LF)-1. in all of our measurements the variation is < 50%, even with
With all these derived parameters, we can calculate the reso- the measurement error taken into account. For simplicity, we
nance frequency of the YBCO metamaterial as a function of can assume thickness independent conductivity. According to
pump power, as shown in Figures 5E–5H for the pump-probe Eq. (1), reducing the film thickness d results in a larger surface
time positions I–IV, respectively. It is again compared to the resistance RS and consequently smaller resonance strength,
experimental results with good agreement. Here we have lim- i.e., a larger resonant transmission minimum, as verified in
ited our discussion to 80 mW pump power due to the dimin- Figure 6A. Reducing the film thickness d increases the sur-
ishing metamaterial resonance strength for further increasing face reactance XS as well, and consequently results in a higher
pump power over 100 mW. Upon photoexcitation, both the kinetic inductance LK, although it also negligibly increases the
resistance and inductance increase, and the overall effect is a Faraday inductance LF [44]. For thin YBCO metamaterials,
reduction of resonance frequency. With increasing the pump- the kinetic inductance LK could be comparable or even larger
probe time delay both the resonance strength and frequency than the Faraday inductance LF. Additionally, the change of LK
recover due to the reformation of Cooper pairs on an ultrafast can be as large as LK,20K/2 upon photoexcitation. As such, the
timescale. overall effect is a lower resonance frequency, which could be
predominantly caused by the increasing kinetic inductance,
and a wider tuning range of the resonance frequency, as
1.0
shown in Figure 6B, for reduced YBCO metamaterial thick-
0.8 A B
ness. The different pump power requirements for tuning of
Resonance transmission minimum

0.6 Experiment the resonant frequency in YBCO metamaterials of varying


0.4 Calculation thicknesses may result from the limited penetration depth of
0.2 the pump laser.
0.0
0.8 C D
0.6 4. Conclusions
0.4
0.2 We have shown the ultrafast resonance tuning behavior
0.0
in high-temperature superconducting THz metamateri-
0 20 40 60 0 20 40 60 80 als through femtosecond near infrared photoexcitation.
Pump power (mW) Increasing the pump power results in a reduced resonance
0.56 strength and red-shifting of frequency. Under low fluence
photoexcitation, the relaxation time is ∼5 ps; further increas-
Resonance frequency (THz)

0.54
ing the pump fluence also introduces significant thermal
Experiment
0.52 effects with a much longer relaxation time. The dynamics
Calculation
0.50 of the metamaterial resonance follows that of the super-
E F conducting films. Using experimentally measured complex
0.48
conductivity of the superconducting films, we are able to
0.54 reproduce such behavior through calculations by including
0.52 the ohmic resistance and kinetic inductance. The theoreti-
cal calculations reveal that the increasing SRR resistance
0.50
G H upon increasing photoexcitation fluence is responsible
0.48 for the reduction of the resonance strength, and both the
0 20 40 60 0 20 40 60 80
resistance and kinetic inductance contribute to the shifting
Pump power (mW)
of the resonance frequency. We have also shown that the
Figure 5 Experimentally measured and theoretically calculated nanoscale thickness of the superconducting films plays an
transmission minimum and resonance frequency. A–D, Resonant important role in the frequency tuning range and require-
transmission minimum, and E–H, resonance frequency as a function ment of optical pump fluence. Thinner superconducting
of pump power for the 100-nm-thick YBCO metamaterial sample at metamaterials require lower pump fluences to switch the
the pump-probe time positions I–IV, respectively. resonance and result in a larger frequency tuning range.

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122 R. Singh et al.: Optical tuning and ultrafast dynamics of high-temperature superconducting terahertz metamaterials

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Opt Express 2010;18(9):9015–9. Received February 21, 2012; accepted March 24, 2012

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