Investigating pairing interactions with coherent charge fluctuation spectroscopy

It has been recently demonstrated that a pump pulse can generate coherent charge fluctuations in a superconductor through a stimulated Raman process [Mansart, et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 110, 4539 (2013)]. Here, we present a tutorial review of the basic phenomena involved and show how the technique bears a strong analogy with nuclear magnetic resonance and electron paramagnetic resonance. The reflectivity of the system gets modulated by the coherent charge fluctuation of the condensate. A resonance at the Mott scale allows to identify a high-energy excitation which is coupled to the superconducting quasiparticles.