Coherent Excited States in Superconductors due to a Microwave Field

Abstract

We describe theoretically the depairing effect of a microwave field on diffusive s-wave superconductors. The ground state of the superconductor is altered qualitatively in analogy to the depairing due to a dc current. In contrast to dc depairing, the density of states acquires, for microwaves with frequency ω0, steps at multiples of the photon energy Δ±n ω0 and shows an exponential-like tail in the subgap regime. We show that this ac depairing explains the measured frequency shift of a superconducting resonator with microwave power at low temperatures.