No Arabic abstract
One of the most essential aspects of cuprate superconductors is a large pseudogap coexisting with a superconducting gap, then some anomalous properties can be understood in terms of the formation of the pseudogap. Within the kinetic energy driven superconducting mechanism, the effect of the pseudogap on the infrared response of cuprate superconductors in the superconducting-state is studied. By considering the interplay between the superconducting gap and pseudogap, the electron current-current correlation function is evaluated based on the linear response approach and it then is employed to calculate finite-frequency conductivity. It is shown that in the underdoped and optimally doped regimes, the transfer of the part of the low-energy spectral weight of the conductivity spectrum to the higher energy region to form a midinfrared band is intrinsically associated with the presence of the pseudogap.
We investigate infrared manifestations of the pseudogap in the prototypical cuprate and pnictide superconductors: YBa2Cu3Oy and BaFe2As2 (Ba122) systems. We find remarkable similarities between the spectroscopic features attributable to the pseudogap in these two classes of superconductors. The hallmarks of the pseudogap state in both systems include a weak absorption feature at about 500 cm-1 followed by a featureless continuum between 500 and 1500 cm-1 in the conductivity data and a significant suppression in the scattering rate below 700 - 900 cm-1. The latter result allows us to identify the energy scale associated with the pseudogap $Delta_{PG}$. We find that in the Ba122-based materials the superconductivity-induced changes of the infrared spectra occur in the frequency region below 100 - 200 cm-1, which is much lower than the energy scale of the pseudogap. We performed theoretical analysis of the scattering rate data of the two compounds using the same model which accounts for the effects of the pseudogap and electron-boson coupling. We find that the scattering rate suppression in Ba122-based compounds below $Delta_{PG}$ is solely due to the pseudogap formation whereas the impact of the electron-boson coupling effects is limited to lower frequencies. The magnetic resonance modes used as inputs in our modeling are found to evolve with the development of the pseudogap, suggesting an intimate correlation between the pseudogap and magnetism.
We use the Nernst effect to delineate the boundary of the pseudogap phase in the temperature-doping phase diagram of cuprate superconductors. New data for the Nernst coefficient $ u(T)$ of YBa$_{2}$Cu$_{3}$O$_{y}$ (YBCO), La$_{1.8-x}$Eu$_{0.2}$Sr$_x$CuO$_4$ (Eu-LSCO) and La$_{1.6-x}$Nd$_{0.4}$Sr$_x$CuO$_4$ (Nd-LSCO) are presented and compared with previous data including La$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$CuO$_4$ (LSCO). The temperature $T_ u$ at which $ u/T$ deviates from its high-temperature behaviour is found to coincide with the temperature at which the resistivity deviates from its linear-$T$ dependence, which we take as the definition of the pseudogap temperature $T^star$- in agreement with gap opening detected in ARPES data. We track $T^star$ as a function of doping and find that it decreases linearly vs $p$ in all four materials, having the same value in the three LSCO-based cuprates, irrespective of their different crystal structures. At low $p$, $T^star$ is higher than the onset temperature of the various orders observed in underdoped cuprates, suggesting that these orders are secondary instabilities of the pseudogap phase. A linear extrapolation of $T^star(p)$ to $p=0$ yields $T^star(pto 0)simeq T_N(0)$, the Neel temperature for the onset of antiferromagnetic order at $p=0$, suggesting that there is a link between pseudogap and antiferromagnetism. With increasing $p$, $T^star(p)$ extrapolates linearly to zero at $psimeq p_{rm c2}$, the critical doping below which superconductivity emerges at high doping, suggesting that the conditions which favour pseudogap formation also favour pairing. We also use the Nernst effect to investigate how far superconducting fluctuations extend above $T_{rm c}$, as a function of doping, and find that a narrow fluctuation regime tracks $T_{rm c}$, and not $T^star$. This confirms that the pseudogap phase is not a form of precursor superconductivity.
In a multiorbital model of the cuprate high-temperature superconductors soft antiferromagnetic (AF) modes are assumed to reconstruct the Fermi surface to form nodal pockets. The subsequent charge ordering transition leads to a phase with a spatially modulated transfer of charge between neighboring oxygen p_x and p_y orbitals and also weak modulations of the charge density on the copper d_{x^2-y^2} orbitals. As a prime result of the AF Fermi surface reconstruction, the wavevectors of the charge modulations are oriented along the crystalline axes with a periodicity that agrees quantitatively with experiments. This resolves a discrepancy between experiments, which find axial order, and previous theoretical calculations, which find modulation wavevectors along the Brillouin zone (BZ) diagonal. The axial order is stabilized by hopping processes via the Cu4s orbital, which is commonly not included in model analyses of cuprate superconductors.
The observations of quantum oscillations in overdoped cuprate superconductors were in agreement with a charge density contained in a cylindrical Fermi surface but the frequencies of lightly doped compounds were much smaller than expected. This was attributed to a topological transition into small pockets of Fermi surface associated with the existence of the charge density wave underlying superlattice. On the other hand, spectroscopic measurements suggested that the large two-dimensional Fermi surface changes continuously into a set of four disconnected arcs. Here we take into account the effect of the pseudogap that limits the available $k$-space area where the Landau levels are developed on the Luttinger theorem and obtain the correct carrier densities. The calculations show how the disconnected arcs evolve into a closed Fermi surface reconciling the experiments.
We calculate scattering interference patterns for various electronic states proposed for the pseudogap regime of the cuprate superconductors. The scattering interference models all produce patterns whose wavelength changes as a function of energy, in contradiction to the energy-independent wavelength seen by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) experiments in the pseudogap state. This suggests that the patterns seen in STM local density of states measurements are not due to scattering interference, but are rather the result of some form of ordering.