Higgs physics in superconductors

Abstract

As pointed out by Nambu&Goldstone, continuous symmetry breaking gives rise to gapless bosonic excitation. In superconductors, continuous local U(1) gauge symmetry is broken. The gapless excitation thus created is the collective phase mode of a superconductor. In 1962, Anderson pointed out that Coulomb interaction lifts this gapless mode to the superconducting plasma frequency. Therefore, in a superconducting fluid there are no bosonic excitations below the Cooper pair binding energy. Anderson mechanism also implies that the massless photon becomes massive in a superconductor. It provides a microscopic theory for dissipationless charge transport (with Landau criterion for superfluidity) and the Meissner effect in a superconductor. Jumping to particle physics, to explain why the gauge bosons for electroweak interaction are massive, Higgs, Englert, Kibble et al. proposed the existence of the Higgs field. This matter field couples to the massless W, Z bosons and generates mass via the Higgs mechanism. Due to their conceptual similarities, these two mechanisms are referred to as the Anderson-Higgs mechanism. In 2013, the detection of the Higgs boson provided the final proof for the Higgs hypothesis decades after its conception. The amplitude mode of a superconductor, which corresponds to the Higgs boson in the above analogy, is referred to as the Higgs mode. Its spectroscopic detection has also remained elusive for decades. In recent years, the development of ultrafast techniques enabled an effective approach for studying the mode. Here, we introduce the Higgs mode from a perspective of why superconductors superconduct and review the recent development in Higgs spectroscopy, particularly in the field of nonlinear terahertz spectroscopy. We discuss the novel insights that may be learnt from these studies for future high-Tc superconductivity and correlated materials research in general.