Collective modes in terahertz field response of superconductors with paramagnetic impurities

Abstract

We consider a problem of nonlinear response to an external electromagnetic radiation of conventional disordered superconductors which contain a small amount of weak magnetic impurities. We focus on the diffusive limit and use Usadel equation to analyze the collective excitations and obtain the dispersion relations for the collective modes. We determine the resonant frequency and dispersion of both amplitude and phase (Carlson-Goldman) modes for moderate strength of magnetic scattering. We find that the Carlson-Goldman and superconducting plasmon modes can only be excited at some finite value of the threshold momentum which increases with an increase in spin-flip scattering rate while the amplitude mode is diffusive and becomes strongly suppressed with the increase in spin-flip scattering. The value of the threshold momentum is determined by the distance between the two consecutive spin-flip scattering events. Furthermore, we also find that the superconducting plasmon mode becomes gapless in the presence of the pair breaking processes. Possible ways towards experimental verification of our results are also discussed.