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Science 30 May 2003:
Vol. 300. no. 5624, pp. 1410 - 1412
DOI: 10.1126/science.1083038
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Reports

Diffusion of Nonequilibrium Quasi-Particles in a Cuprate Superconductor

N. Gedik,1 J. Orenstein,1* Ruixing Liang,2 D. A. Bonn,2 W. N. Hardy2

We report a transport study of nonequilibrium quasi-particles in a high-transition-temperature cuprate superconductor using the transient grating technique. Low-intensity laser excitation (at a photon energy of 1.5 electron volts) was used to introduce a spatially periodic density of quasi-particles into a high-quality untwinned single crystal of YBa2Cu3O6.5. Probing the evolution of the initial density through space and time yielded the quasi-particle diffusion coefficient and the inelastic and elastic scattering rates. The technique reported here is potentially applicable to precision measurements of quasi-particle dynamics not only in cuprate superconductors but in other electronic systems as well.

1 Physics Department, University of California, Berkeley, and Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
2 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1, Canada.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: joeo{at}mh1.lbl.gov

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