Nonlocal optical response of a layered high-temperature superconductor slab

Abstract

We theoretically study the effect of the spatial dispersion on the optical response of a layered high-temperature superconductor slab. The nonlocality of the inherently-anisotropic layered superconductor comes from the wave vector dependence of its average permittivity tensor, and leads to the generation of additional electromagnetic modes just above the characteristic Josephson plasma frequency, that is in the terahertz range. We calculate p-polarization optical spectra for a Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ (Bi2212) superconductor slab, which show very narrow resonances associated with the quantization of the wave vectors of both long-wavelength electromagnetic modes, having negative dispersion, and short-wavelength additional (nonlocal) modes of positive dispersion. The dependence of the frequency position and shape of the resonances on the nonlocality parameter, the slab thickness, and the components of the quasiparticle conductivity is analyzed. We have found that the quantized long-wavelength modes of negative dispersion, which can only be observed at relatively-large slab thicknesses, give rise to prominent resonances in the p-polarization reflectivity spectrum. On the other hand, the resonances associated with quantized additional short-wavelength electromagnetic modes are weak, but they can be clearly observed when the superconductor slab thickness is smaller than the smallest magnetic-field penetration depth.