Terahertz Metamaterial Renormalization of Superconducting Josephson Plasmons in La1.85Sr0.15CuO₄

We investigate light-matter coupling in the cuprate superconductor La1.85Sr0.15Cu0₄ (LSCO), accomplished by adhering metamaterial resonator arrays (MRAs) to a c-axis oriented single crystal. The resonators couple to the Josephson Plasma Mode (JPM) which manifests as a plasma edge in the terahertz reflectivity in the superconducting state. Terahertz reflectivity measurements at 10K reveal a renormalization of the JPM frequency, ωⱼₚₘ, from 1.7 THz for the bare crystal to ~1 THz with the MRAs. With increasing temperature, the modified ωⱼₚₘ redshifts as expected for decreasing superfluid density, vanishing above Tc. The modification of the electrodynamic response arises from resonator induced screening of the longitudinal polariton response, reminiscent of plasmon-phonon coupling in doped semiconductors. Modeling reveals that the electrodynamic response is fully interpretable using classical electromagnetism. Future studies will have to contend with the large effects we observe which could obscure subtle changes that may indicate cavity-based manipulation of superconductivity. Finally, we note that our MRA/LSCO structure is a tunable epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) metamaterial that exhibits a nonlinear response arising from the c-axis Josephson tunneling coupled with the local fields of the resonators.