Electromagnon excitations in high temperature superconducting states

Abstract

In this article, we discover a fundamental excitation called electromagnon in the cuprate superconducting states. Doped holes render local inversion asymmetry which produces hidden Rashba spin-orbit coupling in copper-oxide plane. Rashba effect leads to Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction between neighboring spins, which establishes a general spin Hamitonian combined with Heisenberg exchange interaction. The physical origin of spin fluctuations has been revealed from Rashba-induced DM term. Electromagnon excitations are found to result from spin fluctuations manifested as spin spiral states by hopping of doped holes in high temperature superconducting states. The frequency of electromagnon excitations, peak position of dielectric constant spectrum, decreases linearly with decrease of exchange interaction in various families of superconductors. Comparisons with superconductivity-induced B1g Raman peaks show good agreement and thus possibly provide the experimental evidences for electromagnon excitations in cuprates.