Alessandra Lanzara, Department of Physics, UC Berkeley
After almost twenty years from their discovery, high temperature superconductivity has defied any explanation. One of the reasons is that superconductivity emerges from other competing phases, manifested through the so called pseudogap-state, resulting in a delicate balance that evolves through the phase diagram with doping and temperature. Understanding how this balance takes place is certainly one of the biggest challenges of condensed matter physics today. In this talk I will discuss some of our results in the area of photo-control in high temperature superconductors. I will discuss how superconductivity can be switched on and off through optical excitations, with focus on the complex relationship between pseudogap state and superconductivity.
The implications of these results for the next steps in our quest to understand the fundamental principles underlying the nature of the unconventional superconductivity in novel materials will be discussed.