Superconductivity in its various manifestations has been stimulating both experimental and theoretical progress in condensed-matter physics for more than a hundred years. The remarkable property of electrons to pair up and form quasi-particles gives rise to a plethora of phenomena featuring important practical applications not only in science, but, for instance, also in medicine and metrology. Recently, new directions in investigating this fascinating subject emerged, such as superconductivity out-of equilibrium and topological superconductors. Providing experimental evidence for enhanced superconducting correlations in optically pumped copper oxides at temperatures far above the equilibrium transition temperature, the first issue caused considerable excitement. On the other hand, topological superconductors are believed to provide realizations of highly fault-tolerant qubits by means of hosting non-Abelian quasi-particles, which can be the building blocks of scalable quantum computers. Experimentally verifying the emergence of these Majorana edge modes, exotic quasi-particles in heterostructures consisting of a conventional superconductor and semiconductors or topological insulators, is one of the most urgent questions to be answered right now. Both subjects cannot be accounted for with analytically solvable approximations only, and also provide very challenging numerical problems. We implemented a matrix-product state (MPS) based toolkit exploiting
U(1) symmetries, providing a flexible and efficient platform to study these complex systems. In order to efficiently simulate out-of equilibrium setups we studied, compared, and developed time-evolution algorithms for MPS enabling us to choose the most suitable method for a given task. We also developed a new framework to represent operators in an enlarged Hilbert space so that benefits from conserving
U(1) symmetries can also be exploited in systems that originally break such symmetries (projected purification). Using this method we could efficiently model mesoscopic phenomena such as a charging energy controlled by a gate electrode without further approximations. Equipped with this techniques we studied out-of equilibrium spectral functions to explore how to identify superconducting correlations more reliably on ultra-short timescales. We found conclusive evidence that in particular two-particle spectral functions yield excellent probes for the formation of a (quasi-)condensate out-of equilibrium. Furthermore, we also investigated the question whether in a particular model system there is the possibility of true long-range order out-of equilibrium by studying correlation matrices and the scaling of their eigenvalues. Here, we observe a change in the algebraic decay of the correlations, even though the extrapolated order parameter is still zero within the error bounds. Furthermore, we also investigated the effects of coupling a superconductor-semiconductor heterostructure, which is subject to an in-plane magnetic field and a charging energy controlled by a gate voltage, to normal leads. In the context of experimentally verifying the existence of Majorana edge modes, such systems are believed to be the most promising and recent studies seem to underline this expectation. However, in order to consistently analyze the experimental data, the effects of quantum fluctuations caused by hybridization of the heterostructure with the leads have to be understood. Here, only perturbative limits are available so far, i.e., the weak and strong tunneling limit, while the experimentally relevant regime is expected to be somewhere inbetween. We aimed to fill this gap using the projected purification method to calculate the ground state phase diagram over a wide parameter regime. Our results indicate that the experimental situation is much more involved than what is predicted from perturbative analysis.
This thesis reports on theoretical investigations of the ultrafast nonequilibrium dynamics in superconductors. In particular, two nonequilibrium scenarios are modeled by combining several analytical and numerical methods: transient superconducting phase transition and collective excitations of a superconducting condensate. In the first part of the thesis the possibility to induce singlet superconducting correlations far from equilibrium is explored by applying time-dependent Lanczos algorithm to the one-dimensional extended Hubbard model. Here, the system is driven into a nonequilibrium state by (i) interaction quench and (ii) quench by pulse. In both cases the buildup of the superconducting correlations is studied in view of several correlation functions. Moreover, a transient Meissner effect, which reflects fingerprints of the induced superconductivity, is observed in calculations of the important for experiments time-dependent optical conductivity. In addition, the differences between nonequilibrium dynamics of the extended Hubbard model initiated by interaction quench and by pulse quench are discussed in detail. The second part is devoted to the excitation of collective modes in a superconductor out of equilibrium. First of all, focus is given to the properties of collective modes close to equilibrium conditions, where a linearized response can be expected. Within the framework of the (Nambu-) matrix kinetic theory in the clean limit a comprehensive gauge-invariant description of the collective modes associated with phase fluctuations of the order parameter is analytically formulated for the generalized case of two- band superconducting systems. Particular emphasis is on the application to the recently discovered noncentrosymmetric superconductors. A detailed analysis of the collective modes includes specification of the gauge mode (common to all superconductors) and the Leggett mode (collective fluctuations of the interband phase difference), and investigation of their subtle interplay in view of validity of the charge conservation law and the participation in the Anderson-Higgs mechanism. Further, the nonequilibrium excitation of the superconducting gaps for the case of two-band superconductors with singlet pairing correlations is investigated in a view of optical pump-probe experiments. For this purpose a semi-numerical method based on the density- matrix theory is formulated. In this case additional amplitude (Higgs) modes were identified, which allow to directly detect the properties of the superconducting condensates as a function of time. Moreover, a new interplay between the phase (Leggett) and amplitude (Higgs) modes is studied in detail. In particular it was found that the nonadiabatic excitation process leads to strong coupling between both modes. Finally, based on calculations of the time-dependent optical conductivity the prediction is made that the coupled Higgs and Leggett modes can be clearly visible in the pump-probe absorption spectra.
Recent advances in ultra-fast measurement in cold atoms, as well as pump-probe spectroscopy of K
3C
60 films, have opened the possibility of rapidly quenching systems of interacting fermions to, and across, a finite temperature superfluid transition. However determining that a transient state has approached a second-order critical point is difficult, as standard equilibrium techniques are inapplicable. We show that the approach to the superfluid critical point in a transient state may be detected via time-resolved transport measurements, such as the optical conductivity. We leverage the fact that quenching to the vicinity of the critical point produces a highly time dependent density of superfluid fluctuations, which affect the conductivity in two ways. Firstly by inelastic scattering between the fermions and the fluctuations, and secondly by direct conduction through the fluctuations. The competition between these two effects leads to non-monotonic behavior in the time-resolved optical conductivity, providing a signature of the critical transient state.
This thesis is about unconventional superconductors out of equilibrium. More precisely, it summarizes our theoretical efforts in addressing a few questions related to the real-time evolution in models displaying unconventional superconductivity. Apart from the purely theoretical interest, the motivation for these studies comes from the recent achievement in the field of ultrafast time-resolved spectroscopy on correlated materials, such as the high-temperature copper-oxide superconductors. The task of describing such systems in nonequilibrium is a very difficult one. In this thesis we attack the problem from two different points of view: • the anisotropic unconventional d-wave symmetry, • the strong electron-electron correlations. The thesis is organized as follows: The first part introduces the basic concepts which lay at the foundation of the work presented in the other two parts. In Chapter 1, the concept of unconventional superconductivity is briefly introduced. This mainly includes the high-temperature copper-oxide superconductors and their phenomenology: d-wave symmetry of the super- conducting gap and strong electron-electron interaction. Chapter 2 is devoted to a review of the recent experimental advances in the field of ultrafast spectroscopy of high temperature superconductors and correlated materials, with a particular focus on time- and angle- resolved photoemission spectroscopy. Finally, Chapter 3 is a short review of some works in the field of cold-atom Fermi gases. In the second part we address the physics of the d-wave superconductor after a sudden excitation. First, in Chapter 4 we introduce in some detail a model of mean-field superconductor with a d-wave symmetry. The principal feature of this model is the anisotropy of the gap and the nodal lines along which the gap vanishes. The results concerning the dynamics of the gap after a “quantum quench” are exposed in Chapter 5 where we compare our model to the s-wave superconductor. This comparison allows to identify the consequences of the unconventional symmetry. In Chapter 6 we discuss the spectral features of the transient nonequilibrium state of the d-wave superconductor. This is particularly important to move a first step towards photoemission experiments. In the third part we concentrate on the attractive Hubbard model as a prototype of strongly correlated superconductor. In Chapter 8 we discuss the superconducting state at equilibrium with the use of dynamical mean-field theory. In Chapter 9 we discuss the extension of this technique to systems out of equilibrium. In particular it is described the implementation in the superconducting phase. At the end of the thesis two appendices give some details of the calculations.
In time-resolved photoemission experiments, more than one electron can be emitted from the solid by a single ultrashort pulse. We theoretically demonstrate how correlations between the momenta of outgoing electrons relate to time-dependent two-particle correlations in the solid. This can extend the scope of time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy to probe superconducting and charge density fluctuations in systems without long-range order, and to reveal their dynamics independent of the electronic gap and thus unrestricted by the energy-time uncertainty. The proposal is illustrated for superconductivity in a BCS model. An impulsive perturbation can quench the gap on ultrafast timescales, while nonequilibrium pairing correlations persist much longer, even when electron-electron scattering beyond mean-field theory is taken into account. There is thus a clear distinction between a dephasing of the Cooper pairs and the thermalization into the normal state. While a measurement of the gap would be blind to such pairing correlations, they can be revealed by the angular correlations in photoemission.
Within the time-dependent Gutzwiller approximation applied to the negative-
U Hubbard model, we investigate the dynamics of a superconductor after an interaction quench for different values of the final interaction from weak to strong coupling. The equilibrium BCS-BEC crossover becomes a sharp transition in the out-of-equilibrium dynamics between weak- and strong-coupling dynamical phases. Two different frequencies (${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{J}<{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{U}$) dominate the order parameter dynamics. In the weak coupling phase, ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{J}$ follows twice the asymptotic average value of the gap (${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{J}\ensuremath{\approx}2{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}}_{\ensuremath{\infty}}$) and ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{U}$ is much larger but hardy visible in the anomalous density. At long times the BCS dynamics is recovered but surprisingly differences remain during the transient phase. In the strong coupling phase, the dynamics decouples from the asymptotic value of the order parameter except at exactly half filling and close to the dynamical transition where ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{U}\ensuremath{\approx}2{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}}_{\ensuremath{\infty}}$. The out-of-equilibrium transient spectral density and optical conductivity are presented and discussed in relation to pump probe experiments. Both ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{J}$ and ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{U}$ give rise to a complex structure of self-driven slow Rabi oscillations which are visible in the nonequilibrium optical conductivity where also sidebands appear due to the modulation of the double occupancy by superconducting amplitude oscillations. Analogous results apply to CDW and SDW systems. Our results show that in systems with long coherence times, pump-probe experiments allow us to characterize the regime (BCS vs preformed pairs) through very specific out-of-equilibrium fingerprints.