Quasiparticle relaxation dynamics in Hg-1223 studied by femtosecond time-resolved optical spectroscopy

Following recent progress in understanding the relaxation dynamics of photoexcited carriers in materials exhibiting a small gap in the low-energy excitation spectrum we have performed pump-probe measurements on near optimally doped Hg-1223. We show that the behavior is very similar as in optimally-doped YBCO, where the data can be interpreted with the coexisting presence of two energy gaps: normal state T-independent pseudogap and a mean-field-like collective gap, associated with intrinsic spatially inhomogeneous ground state. An important difference between the two compounds is found in the low temperature relaxation time, which in Hg-1223 is found to be strongly temperature and photoexcitation intensity dependent.