Out-of-equilibrium charge redistribution in a copper-oxide based superconductor by time-resolved X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

Abstract Charge-transfer excitations are of paramount importance for understanding the electronic structure of copper-oxide based high-temperature superconductors. In this study, we investigate the response of a Bi $$_2$$ 2 Sr $$_2$$ 2 CaCu $$_2$$ 2 O $$_{\textrm{8}+ \delta }$$ 8 + δ crystal to the charge redistribution induced by an infrared ultrashort pulse. Element-selective time-resolved core-level photoelectron spectroscopy with a high energy resolution allows disentangling the dynamics of oxygen ions with different coordination and bonds thanks to their different chemical shifts. Our experiment shows that the O 1s component arising from the Cu–O planes is significantly perturbed by the infrared light pulse. Conversely, the apical oxygen, also coordinated with Sr ions in the Sr-O planes, remains unaffected. This result highlights the peculiar behavior of the electronic structure of the Cu–O planes. It also unlocks the way to study the out-of-equilibrium electronic structure of copper-oxide-based high-temperature superconductors by identifying the O 1s core-level emission originating from the oxygen ions in the Cu–O planes. This ability could be critical to gain information about the strongly-correlated electron ultrafast dynamical mechanisms in the Cu–O plane in the normal and superconducting phases.