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Despite decades of intensive experimental and theoretical efforts, the physics of cuprate high-temperature superconductors in general, and, in particular, their normal state, is still under debate. Here, we report our investigation of low-energy charge excitations in the normal state. We find that the peculiarities of the electronic band structure at low energies have a profound impact on the nature of the intraband collective modes. It gives rise to a new kind of mode with huge intensity and non-Lorentzian spectral function in addition to well-known collective excitations like conventional plasmons and spin fluctuation. We predict two such modes with maximal spectral weight in the nodal and antinodal directions. Additionally, we found a long-living quasi-one-dimensional plasmon becoming an intense soft mode over an extended momentum range along the antinodal direction. These modes might explain some of the resonant inelastic X-ray scattering spectroscopy data.

We study theoretically the optical properties of palladium nanodisks during hydrogen uptake. A combination of an ab initio quantum mechanical description of the Pd-H dielectric properties and a full electrodynamical study of light scattering in the H-modified Pd nanodisks allows us to trace the shift of the localized surface plasmon as a function of the H concentration in the Pd-H disk. We follow the evolution of the plasmon peak energy for different admixtures of the Pd-H α and β phases and interpret quantitatively the experimental sensitivity of the plasmon energy shift to the structural inhomogeneity upon H absorption. Our multiscale theoretical framework provides a solid background for plasmonic sensing of structural domains, as well as for identifying H saturation conditions in metal hydride systems.