No Arabic abstract
The individual kparallel and kperp stripe excitations in fluctuating spin-charge stripes have not been observed yet. In Raman scattering if we set, for example, incident and scattered light polarizations to two possible stripe directions, we can observe the fluctuating stripe as if it is static. Using the different symmetry selection rule between the B1g two-magnon scattering and the B1g and B2g isotropic electronic scattering, we succeeded to obtain the kparallel and kperp strip magnetic excitations separately in La2-xSrxCuO4. Only the kperp stripe excitations appear in the wide-energy isotropic electronic Raman scattering, indicating that the charge transfer is restricted to the direction perpendicular to the stripe. This is the same as the Burgers vector of an edge dislocation which easily slides perpendicularly to the stripe. Hence charges at the edge dislocation move together with the dislocation perpendicularly to the stripe, while other charges are localized. A looped edge dislocation has lower energy than a single edge dislocation. The superconducting coherence length is close to the inter-charge stripe distance at x le 0.2. Therefore we conclude that Cooper pairs are formed at looped edge dislocations. The restricted charge transfer direction naturally explains the opening of a pseudogap around (0, {pi}) for the stripe parallel to the b axis and the reconstruction of the Fermi surface to have a flat plane near (0, {pi}). They break the four-fold rotational symmetry. Furthermore the systematic experiments revealed the carrier density dependence of the isotropic and anisotropic electronic excitations, the spin density wave and/or charge density wave gap near ({pi}/2, {pi}/2), and the strong coupling between the electronic states near ({pi}/2, {pi}/2) and the zone boundary phonons at ({pi}, {pi}).
The superconducting transition temperature, Tc, of bilayers comprising underdoped La2-xSrxCuO4 films capped by a thin heavily overdoped metallic La1.65Sr0.35CuO4 layer, is found to increase with respect to Tc of the bare underdoped films. The highest Tc is achieved for x = 0.12, close to the anomalous 1/8 doping level, and exceeds that of the optimally-doped bare film. Our data suggest that the enhanced superconductivity is confined to the interface between the layers. We attribute the effect to a combination of the high pairing scale in the underdoped layer with an enhanced phase stiffness induced by the overdoped film.
We use inelastic neutron scattering to measure the magnetic excitations in the underdoped superconductor La2-xSrxCuO4 (x=0.085, Tc=22 K) over energy and temperatures ranges 5 < E < 200 meV and 5 < T < 300 K respectively. At high temperature (T = 300 K), we observe strongly damped excitations with a characteristic energy scale of approximately 50 meV. As the temperature is lowered to T = 30 K, and we move into the pseudogap state, the magnetic excitations become highly structured in energy and momentum below about 60 meV. This change appears to be associated with the development of the pseudogap in the electronic excitations.
Using scanning tunneling spectroscopy we examined the local density of states of thin c-axis La2-xSrxCuO4 films, over wide doping and temperature ranges. We found that the pseudogap exists only at doping levels lower than optimal. For x = 0.12, close to the anomalous x = 1/8 doping level, a zero bias conductance peak was the dominant spectral feature, instead of the excepted V- shaped (c-axis tunneling) gap structure. We have established that this surprising effect cannot be explained by tunneling into (110) facets. Possible origins for this unique behavior are discussed.
We report a high precision search for orbital-like magnetic order in the pseudogap region of La2-xSrxCuO4 single crystals using zero-field muon spin relaxation (ZF-muSR). In contrast to previous studies of this kind, the effects of the dipolar and quadrupolar interactions of the muon with nearby nuclei are calculated. ZF-muSR spectra with a high number of counts were also recorded to determine whether a magnetically ordered phase exists in dilute regions of the sample. Despite these efforts, we find no evidence for static magnetic order of any kind in the pseudogap region above the hole-doping concentration p = 0.13.
A series of high-quality under-doped La2-xSrxCuO4 superconductor crystals with x = 0.063 - 0.125 were prepared by traveling-solvent floating-zone (TSFZ) technique. We found by dc magnetic measurements that, in this series of crystals, the superconducting transition was quite sharp in the vicinity of the hole densities of x = 1/16 and x = 1/9 while it was much broader away from these two magic numbers, and the Meissner fraction showed a remarkable minimum near x = 1/9. We concluded that these phenomena are reflections of intrinsic properties of this cuprate system. Our observations are discussed in light of recently proposed composite charge model together with charge inhomogeneity and electronic phase separations.