No Arabic abstract
There are processes in nature that resemble a true force but arise due to the minimization of the local energy. The most well-known case is the exchange interaction that leads to magnetic order in some materials. We discovered a new similar process occurring in connection with an electronic phase separation transition that leads to charge inhomogeneity in cuprate superconductors. The minimization of the local free energy, described here by the Cahn-Hilliard diffusion equation, drives the charges into regions of low and high densities. This motion leads to an effective potential with two-fold effect: creation of tiny isolated regions or micrograins, and two-body attraction, which promotes local or intra-grain superconducting pairing. Consequently, as in granular superconductors, the superconducting transition appears in two steps. First, with local intra-grain superconducting amplitudes and, at lower temperature, the superconducting phase or resistivity transition is attained by intergrain Josephson coupling. We show here that this approach reproduces the main features of the cuprates phase diagram, gives a clear interpretation to the pseudogap phase and yields the position dependent local density of states gap $Delta(vec r)$ measured by tunnelling experiments.
A general constructive procedure is presented for analyzing magnetic instabilities in two-dimensional materials, in terms of [predominantly] double nesting, and applied to Hartree-Fock HF+RPA and Gutzwiller approximation GA+RPA calculations of the Hubbard model. Applied to the cuprates, it is found that competing magnetic interactions are present only for hole doping, between half filling and the Van Hove singularity. While HF+RPA instabilities are present at all dopings (for sufficiently large Hubbard U), in a Gutzwiller approximation they are restricted to a doping range close to the range of relevance for the physical cuprates. The same model would hold for charge instabilities, except that the interaction is more likely to be q-dependent.
The experimentally measured phase diagram of cuprate superconductors in the temperature-applied magnetic field plane illuminates key issues in understanding the physics of these materials. At low temperature, the superconducting state gives way to a long-range charge order with increasing magnetic field; both the orders coexist in a small intermediate region. The charge order transition is strikingly insensitive to temperature, and quickly reaches a transition temperature close to the zero-field superconducting $T_c$. We argue that such a transition along with the presence of the coexisting phase cannot be described simply by a competing orders formalism. We demonstrate that for some range of parameters there is an enlarged symmetry of the strongly coupled charge and superconducting orders in the system depending on their relative masses and the coupling strength of the two orders. We establish that this sharp switch from the superconducting phase to the charge order phase can be understood in the framework of a composite SU(2) order parameter comprising the charge and superconducting orders. Finally, we illustrate that there is a possibility of the coexisting phase of the competing charge and superconducting orders only when the SU(2) symmetry between them is weakly broken due to biquadratic terms in the free energy. The relation of this sharp transition to the proximity to the pseudogap quantum critical doping is also discussed.
In the last few years charge density waves (CDWs) have been ubiquitously observed in high-temperature superconducting cuprates and are now the most investigated among the competing orders in the still hot debate on these systems. A wealth of new experimental data raise several fundamental issues that challenge the various theoretical proposals. Here, we account for the complex experimental temperature vs. doping phase diagram and we provide a coherent scenario explaining why different CDW onset curves are observed by different experimental probes and seem to extrapolate at zero temperature into seemingly different quantum critical points (QCPs) in the intermediate and overdoped region. We also account for the pseudogap and its onset temperature T*(p) on the basis of dynamically fluctuating CDWs. The nearly singular anisotropic scattering mediated by these fluctuations also account for the rapid changes of the Hall number seen in experiments and provides the first necessary step for a possible Fermi surface reconstruction fully establishing at lower doping. Finally we show that phase fluctuations of the CDWs, which are enhanced in the presence of strong correlations near the Mott insulating phase, naturally account for the disappearance of the CDWs at low doping with yet another QCP.
A possibility of holon (boson) pair condensation is explored for hole doped high T_c cuprates, by using the U(1) slave-boson representation of the t-J Hamiltonian with the inclusion of hole-hole repulsion. A phase diagram of the hole doped high T_c cuprates is deduced by allowing both the holon pairing and spinon pairing. It is shown that the spin gap size remains nearly unchanged below the holon pair condensation temperature. We find that the s-wave holon pairing under the condition of d-wave singlet pairing is preferred, thus allowing d-wave hole pairing.
We investigate the specific influence of structural disorder on the suppression of antiferromagnetic order and on the emergence of cuprate superconductivity. We single out pure disorder, by focusing on a series of Y$_{z}$Eu$_{1-z}$Ba$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{6+y}$ samples at fixed oxygen content $y=0.35$, in the range $0le zle 1$. The gradual Y/Eu isovalent substitution smoothly drives the system through the Mott-insulator to superconductor transition from a full antiferromagnet with Neel transition $T_N=320$ K at $z=0$ to a bulk superconductor with superconducting critical temperature $T_c=18$ K at $z=1$, YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{6.35}$. The electronic properties are finely tuned by gradual lattice deformations induced by the different cationic radii of the two lanthanides, inducing a continuous change of the basal Cu(1)-O chain length, as well as a controlled amount of disorder in the active Cu(2)O$_2$ bilayers. We check that internal charge transfer from the basal to the active plane is entirely responsible for the doping of the latter and we show that superconductivity emerges with orthorhombicity. By comparing transition temperatures with those of the isoelectronic clean system we deterime the influence of pure structural disorder connected with the Y/Eu alloy.