Abstract-Transient terahertz photoconductivity of insulating cuprates

J. C. Petersen, A. Farahani, D. G. Sahota, Ruixing Liang, and J. S. Dodge

https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.96.115133

We establish a detailed phenomenology of photocarrier transport in the copper oxide plane by studying the transient terahertz photoconductivity of ${\mathrm{Sr}}_2{\mathrm{CuO}}_2{\mathrm{Cl}}_2$ and ${\mathrm{YBa}}_2{\mathrm{Cu}}_3{O}_6$. The peak photoconductivity saturates with fluence, decays on multiple picosecond timescales, and evolves into a state characterized by activated transport. The time dependence shows little change with fluence, indicating that the decay is governed by first-order recombination kinetics. We find that most photocarriers make a negligible contribution to the dc photoconductivity, and we estimate the intrinsic photocarrier mobility to be 0.6–0.7 ${\text{cm}}^2/\text{V}\text{s}$ at early times, comparable to the mobility in chemically doped materials.

• 
• 
• 
• 
•