Excitation of coherent oscillations in underdoped cuprate superconductors by intense THz pulses

We use intense broadband THz pulses to excite the cuprate superconductors YBCO and NBCO in their underdoped phase, where superconducting and charge density wave ground states compete. We observe pronounced coherent oscillations at attributed to renormalized low-energy phonon modes. These oscillation features are much more prominent than those observed in all-optical pump-probe measurements, suggesting a different excitation mechanism.