Anomalies of the infrared-active phonons in underdoped YBCO as an evidence for the intra-bilayer Josephson effect

Abstract

The spectra of the far-infrared c-axis conductivity of underdoped YBCO crystals exhibit dramatic changes of some of the phonon peaks when going from the normal to the superconducting state. We show that the most striking of these anomalies can be naturally explained by changes of the local fields acting on the ions arising from the onset of inter- and intra-bilayer Josephson effects.