Light-Induced Superconductivity in a Stripe-Ordered Cuprate
D. Fausti · R. I. Tobey · N. Dean · S. Kaiser · A. Dienst · M. C. Hoffmann · S. Pyon · T. Takayama · H. Takagi · A. Cavalleri
Abstract and summary · read the original at the source · none found
In one page
Some copper-oxide compounds refuse to superconduct because their electrons lock into stripes — alternating one-dimensional lanes of spin and charge that hold the material rigid. Fausti, Tobey, Dean and colleagues in Andrea Cavalleri’s group hit one of those compounds, a lanthanum-europium-strontium copper oxide that does not superconduct at all, with a femtosecond pulse of mid-infrared light. For a moment afterwards it is a superconductor, and not a single-layer one: current moves coherently between the copper-oxide planes as well as within them, which makes it three-dimensional. They know because a Josephson plasma resonance appears promptly in the material’s optical response along the stacking axis, the fingerprint of coherent tunnelling from layer to layer. The striking number is the clock. The superconducting phase assembles within one to two picoseconds at most, far faster than anyone expected it could. That speed is the result’s teeth: it puts hard new limits on what stripe order can be and on how it is related to superconductivity.
Why it matters hereChapter 11 treats superconductors as the material where the most interesting effects are looked for, and this is the demonstration that superconductivity itself can be switched on by light in a compound that does not have it — a property of matter driven into existence rather than doped in. Chapter 2 keeps the ledger of what a driven electromagnetic field can be made to do to a medium, and a single infrared pulse turning a striped, non-superconducting crystal into a three-dimensional superconductor belongs on that ledger.
What it claims
01One of the most intriguing features of some high-temperature cuprate superconductors is the interplay between one-dimensional striped spin order and charge order on the one hand, and superconductivity on the other.Abstract, first sentence
Published and peer-reviewed02The starting material is chosen precisely because it does not superconduct: La1.675Eu0.2Sr0.125CuO4, a stripe-ordered cuprate in its nonsuperconducting state.Abstract, second sentence
Published and peer-reviewed03Mid-infrared femtosecond pulses transform that compound into a transient three-dimensional superconductor — the superconductivity is induced by the light, not present beforehand.Abstract, second sentence
Published and peer-reviewed04The evidence for the claim is a specific optical signature: the emergence of coherent interlayer transport is evidenced by the prompt appearance of a Josephson plasma resonance in the c-axis optical properties, which is the response of coherent tunnelling between the copper-oxide planes.Abstract, third sentence
Published and peer-reviewed05An upper limit for the time scale needed to form the superconducting phase is estimated at 1 to 2 picoseconds, which the authors state is significantly faster than expected.Abstract, fourth sentence
Published and peer-reviewed06The consequence the authors draw is theoretical rather than technological: the speed of formation places stringent new constraints on our understanding of stripe order and its relation to superconductivity, which is the question the follow-up experiments are aimed at.Abstract, closing sentence
What to watch
Read it · abstract
Abstract
One of the most intriguing features of some high-temperature cuprate superconductors is the interplay between one-dimensional "striped" spin order and charge order, and superconductivity. We used mid-infrared femtosecond pulses to transform one such stripe-ordered compound, nonsuperconducting La(1.675)Eu(0.2)Sr(0.125)CuO(4), into a transient three-dimensional superconductor. The emergence of coherent interlayer transport was evidenced by the prompt appearance of a Josephson plasma resonance in the c-axis optical properties. An upper limit for the time scale needed to form the superconducting phase is estimated to be 1 to 2 picoseconds, which is significantly faster than expected. This places stringent new constraints on our understanding of stripe order and its relation to superconductivity.
D. Fausti, R. I. Tobey, N. Dean, S. Kaiser, A. Dienst, M. C. Hoffmann, S. Pyon, T. Takayama, H. Takagi and A. Cavalleri, Light-Induced Superconductivity in a Stripe-Ordered Cuprate, Science 331, 189 (2011).
(Abstract only, and the full text was not reachable — see the rights note above. On this site, the same group’s successor experiment, which identifies the nonlinear lattice motion behind the effect in YBa2Cu3O6.5, is at /library/stm-3366f0afb1. The other route to the same goal — leaving the material alone and changing the vacuum around it instead — is at /library/stm-b7a1a66f71 for niobium diselenide in a split-ring cavity, /library/stm-812175a230 for the two-dimensional limit of the same material, /library/stm-94b2666369 for an underdoped cuprate in a cavity, and /library/stm-21d2922b6e for the theory of superconductivity under strong coupling to the vacuum electromagnetic field.)
The way in
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1197294SOURCE NOT REACHED IN FULL. The article is held by AAAS as Science volume 331, pages 189 to 191, and Crossref carries no licence statement for it. On 2026-09-08 an open copy was looked for and not found: arXiv returns no preprint under this title, and a search of the Cavalleri group’s arXiv record for stripe-phase work returns their later papers from 2013 onward but not this one; OpenAlex and Unpaywall both report open access status closed with no repository location; Semantic Scholar records the same and states that the publisher has elided the abstract from its record; Europe PMC holds the PubMed record, 21233381, and reports it neither open access nor in Europe PMC. The status was raised from summary-only to abstract-only because the authors’ own complete abstract is carried, identically, by two independent bibliographic records — OpenAlex and Europe PMC — and it is that abstract which is reproduced below and which the summary and every claim are written from; the locators therefore all say Abstract, because the abstract is what was read. FORMULA. The abstract is reproduced exactly as those records carry it, including the plain-text rendering of the compound as La(1.675)Eu(0.2)Sr(0.125)CuO(4); in the journal those numbers are set as subscripts, and the parentheses are a transcription artefact of the record, not the authors’ notation. AUTHORS. Initials are left unexpanded except where a bibliographic authority names the person directly. The work is from the Max Planck Research Department for Structural Dynamics at the University of Hamburg, the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, and the Department of Advanced Materials at the University of Tokyo.
How to cite it
D. Fausti, R. I. Tobey, N. Dean, S. Kaiser, A. Dienst, M. C. Hoffmann, S. Pyon, T. Takayama, H. Takagi, A. Cavalleri (2011) Light-Induced Superconductivity in a Stripe-Ordered Cuprate. doi:10.1126/science.1197294
Where it sits in the curriculum