A paper from my postdoc is out!
http://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.95.115125
https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.06694
Electron-doped cuprates are the lesser-studied siblings of the hole-doped high temperature superconductors. Though they share copper-oxygen planes with the hole-doped cuprates, they have a phase diagram similar to other unconventional superconductors (heavy fermions, organics, iron-based) with an antiferromagnetic phase that abuts against or possibly coexists with superconductivity. In this paper we explored antiferromagnetic correlations in thin films of LCCO, using femtosecond pump-probe spectrocopy. We were sensitive to antiferromagnetic correlations via this optical technique because they open a spectral gap in the band dispersion, and the dynamics of excitation recombination across this gap can give information about timescales over which antiferromagnetic correlations are static and coupling between electrons and high-frequency boson.