Terahertz nano-spectroscopy and imaging of superfluid surface plasmons in conventional and anisotropic superconductors

We numerically model near-field spectroscopy and superfluid polariton imaging experiments on conventional and unconventional superconductors in the infrared and terahertz regime. Our modeling shows that near-field spectroscopy can measure the magnitude of the superconducting gap in Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superconductors with nanoscale spatial resolution. We demonstrate how the same technique can measure the $c$-axis plasma frequency, and thus the $c$-axis superfluid density, of layered unconventional superconductors such as cuprates and pnictides with identical spatial resolution. We discuss the development of a cryogenic terahertz near-field microscope designed to perform these proposed experiments.