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arXiv · 1611.01053

Coherent Order Parameter Oscillations in the Ground State of the Excitonic Insulator Ta2NiSe5

Daniel Werdehausen·Tomohiro Takayama·Marc Höppner·Gelon Albrecht·Andreas W. Rost·Yangfan Lu·Dirk Manske·Hidenori Takagi·Stefan Kaiser
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Abstract

The excitonic insulator is an intriguing electronic phase of quasi-condensed excitons. A prominent candidate is the small bandgap semiconductor Ta2NiSe5, in which excitons are believed to undergo a BEC-like transition. But experimental evidence for the existence of a coherent condensate in this material is still missing. A direct fingerprint of such a state would be the observation of its collective modes, which are equivalent to the Higgs- and Goldstone-modes in superconductors. Here we report evidence for the existence of a coherent amplitude response in the excitonic insulator phase of Ta2NiSe5. Using non-linear excitations with short laser pulses we identify a phonon-coupled state of the condensate that can be understood as a coupling of its electronic Higgs-mode to a low frequency phonon. The Higgs-mode contribution substantiates the picture of an electronically driven phase transition and characterizes the transient order parameter of the excitonic insulator as a function of temperature and excitation density.

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Daniel Werdehausen, Tomohiro Takayama, Marc Höppner, Gelon Albrecht, Andreas W. Rost, Yangfan Lu, Dirk Manske, Hidenori Takagi, Stefan Kaiser. 2016-11-03. Coherent Order Parameter Oscillations in the Ground State of the Excitonic Insulator Ta2NiSe5. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aap8652

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