The comprehensive study of the temperature dependent x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) reveals a dynamical spectral weight $alpha$ in YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_y$ (YBCO). Large spectral weight changes for both the Upper Hubbard band and the Zhang-Rice band due to dynamics of holes are experimentally found in the underdoped regime. A large value of $alpha geq 0.3$ is indispensable to describing XAS of YBCO with the conservation of states. The value of $alpha$ is linearly proportional to the pseudogap temperature in the underdoped regime, but becomes smaller as the doping level goes to the undoped limit. Our results clearly indicate that the pseudogap is related to the double occupancy and originates from bands in higher energies.
The phase diagram of cuprate high-temperature superconductors features an enigmatic pseudogap region that is characterized by a partial suppression of low energy electronic excitations. Polarized neutron diffraction, Nernst effect, THz polarimetery and ultrasound measurements on YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_y$ suggest that the pseudogap onset below a temperature T* coincides with a bona fide thermodynamic phase transition that breaks time-reversal, four-fold rotation and mirror symmetries respectively. However, the full point group above and below T* has not been resolved and the fate of this transition as T* approaches the superconducting critical temperature T$_c$ is poorly understood. Here we reveal the point group of YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_y$ inside its pseudogap and neighboring regions using high sensitivity linear and second harmonic optical anisotropy measurements. We show that spatial inversion and two-fold rotational symmetries are broken below T* while mirror symmetries perpendicular to the Cu-O plane are absent at all temperatures. This transition occurs over a wide doping range and persists inside the superconducting dome, with no detectable coupling to either charge ordering or superconductivity. These results suggest that the pseudogap region coincides with an odd-parity order that does not arise from a competing Fermi surface instability and exhibits a quantum phase transition inside the superconducting dome.
Intense laser pulses have recently emerged as a tool to tune between different orders in complex quantum materials. Among different light-induced phenomena, transient superconductivity far above the equilibrium transition temperature in cuprates is particularly attractive. Key to those experiments was the resonant pumping of specific phonon modes, which was believed to induce superconducting phase coherence by suppressing the competing orders or modifying the structure slightly. Here, we present a comprehensive study of photo-induced nonequilibrium response in underdoped YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{6+x}$. We find that upon photo-excitations, Josephson plasma edge in superconducting state is initially removed accompanied by quasiparticle excitations, and subsequently reappears at frequency lower than the static plasma edge within short time. In normal state, an enhancement or weaker edge-like shape is indeed induced by pump pulses in the reflectance spectrum accompanied by simultaneous rises in both real and imaginary parts of conductivity. We compare the pump-induced effects between near- and mid-infrared excitations and exclude phonon pumping as a scenario for the photo-induced effects above. We further elaborate the transient responses in normal state are unlikely to be explained by photo-induced superconductivity.
We report a comprehensive Cu L$_3$-edge resonant x-ray scattering study of two- and three-dimensional (2D and 3D) incommensurate charge correlations in single crystals of the underdoped high-temperature superconductor YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{6.67}$ under uniaxial compression up to 1% along the two inequivalent Cu-O-Cu bond directions (a and b) in the CuO$_2$ planes. The pressure response of the 2D charge correlations is symmetric: pressure along a enhances correlations along b, and vice versa. Our results imply that the underlying order parameter is uniaxial. In contrast, 3D long-range charge order is only observed along b in response to compression along a. Spectroscopic resonant x-ray scattering measurements show that the 3D charge order resides exclusively in the CuO$_2$ planes and may thus be generic to the cuprates. We discuss implications of these results for models of electronic nematicity and for the interplay between charge order and superconductivity.
Polarization dependent vanadium L edge X-ray absorption spectra of BaVS$_3$ single crystals are measured in the four phases of the compound. The difference between signals with the polarization textbf{E}$perp$textbf{c} and textbf{E}$parallel$textbf{c} (linear dichroism) changes with temperature. Besides increasing intensity of one of the maxima, a new structure appears in the pre-edge region below the metal-insulator transition. More careful examination brings to light that the changes start already with pretransitional charge density wave fluctuations. Simple symmetry analysis suggests that the effect is related to rearrangements in $E_{g}$ and $A_{1g}$ states, and is compatible with the formation of four inequivalent V sites along the V-S chain.
Observing how electronic states in solids react to a local symmetry breaking provides insight into their microscopic nature. A striking example is the formation of bound states when quasiparticles are scattered off defects. This is known to occur, under specific circumstances, in some metals and superconductors but not, in general, in the charge-density-wave (CDW) state. Here, we report the unforeseen observation of bound states when a magnetic field quenches superconductivity and induces long-range CDW order in YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_y$. Bound states indeed produce an inhomogeneous pattern of the local density of states $N(E_F)$ that leads to a skewed distribution of Knight shifts which is detected here through an asymmetric profile of $^{17}$O NMR lines. We argue that the effect arises most likely from scattering off defects in the CDW state, which provides a novel case of disorder-induced bound states in a condensed-matter system and an insightful window into charge ordering in the cuprates.