No Arabic abstract
A major challenge in understanding the cuprate superconductors is to clarify the nature of the fundamental electronic correlations that lead to the pseudogap phenomenon. Here we use ultrashort light pulses to prepare a non-thermal distribution of excitations and capture novel properties that are hidden at equilibrium. Using a broadband (0.5-2 eV) probe we are able to track the dynamics of the dielectric function, unveiling an anomalous decrease of the scattering rate of the charge carriers in a pseudogap-like region of the temperature ($T$) and hole-doping ($p$) phase diagram. In this region, delimited by a well-defined $T^*_{neq}(p)$ line, the photo-excitation process triggers the evolution of antinodal excitations from gapped (localized) to delocalized quasi-particles characterized by a longer lifetime. The novel concept of photo-enhanced antinodal conductivity is naturally explained within the single-band Hubbard model, in which the short-range Coulomb repulsion leads to a k-space differentiation between nodal quasiparticles and antinodal excitations.
Large pulsed magnetic fields up to 60 Tesla are used to suppress the contribution of superconducting fluctuations (SCF) to the ab-plane conductivity above Tc in a series of YBa2Cu3O(6+x). These experiments allow us to determine the field Hc(T) and the temperature Tc above which the SCFs are fully suppressed. A careful investigation near optimal doping shows that Tc is higher than the pseudogap temperature T*, which is an unambiguous evidence that the pseudogap cannot be assigned to preformed pairs. Accurate determinations of the SCF contribution to the conductivity versus temperature and magnetic field have been achieved. They can be accounted for by thermal fluctuations following the Ginzburg-Landau scheme for nearly optimally doped samples. A phase fluctuation contribution might be invoked for the most underdoped samples in a T range which increases when controlled disorder is introduced by electron irradiation. Quantitative analysis of the fluctuating magnetoconductance allows us to determine the critical field Hc2(0) which is found to be be quite similar to Hc(0) and to increase with hole doping. Studies of the incidence of disorder on both Tc and T* allow us to propose a three dimensional phase diagram including a disorder axis, which allows to explain most observations done in other cuprate families.
When matter undergoes a phase transition from one state to another, usually a change in symmetry is observed, as some of the symmetries exhibited are said to be spontaneously broken. The superconducting phase transition in the underdoped high-Tc superconductors is rather unusual, in that it is not a mean-field transition as other superconducting transitions are. Instead, it is observed that a pseudo-gap in the electronic excitation spectrum appears at temperatures T* higher than Tc, while phase coherence, and superconductivity, are established at Tc (Refs. 1, 2). One would then wish to understand if T* is just a crossover, controlled by fluctuations in order which will set in at the lower Tc (Refs. 3, 4), or whether some symmetry is spontaneously broken at T* (Refs. 5-10). Here, using angle-resolved photoemission with circularly polarized light, we find that, in the pseudogap state, left-circularly polarized photons give a different photocurrent than right-circularly polarized photons, and therefore the state below T* is rather unusual, in that it breaks time reversal symmetry11. This observation of a phase transition at T* provides the answer to a major mystery of the phase diagram of the cuprates. The appearance of the anomalies below T* must be related to the order parameter that sets in at this characteristic temperature .
We have performed an angle-resolved photoemission study of the nodal quasi-particle spectra of the high-Tc cuprate tri-layer Bi2Sr2Ca2Cu3O10+d (Tc~ 110 K). The spectral weight Z of the nodal quasi-particle increases with decreasing temperature across the Tc. Such a temperature dependence is qualitatively similar to that of the coherence peak intensity in the anti nodal region of various high-Tc cuprates although the nodal spectral weight remains finite and large above Tc. We attribute this observation to the reduction of electron correlation strength in going from the normal metallic state to the superconducting state, a characteristic behavior of a superconductor with strong electron correlation.
The charge dynamics in weakly hole doped high temperature superconductors is studied in terms of the accurate numerical solution to a model of a single hole interacting with a quantum lattice in an antiferromagnetic background, and accurate far-infrared ellipsometry measurements. The experimentally observed two electronic bands in the infrared spectrum can be identified in terms of the interplay between the electron correlation and electron-phonon interaction resolving the long standing mystery of the mid-infrared band.
We have studied the momentum dependence of the energy gap of Bi2(Sr,R)2CuOy by angleresolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), particularly focusing on the difference between R=La and Eu. By comparing the gap function and characteristic temperatures between the two sets of samples, we show that there exist three distinct energy scales, {Delta}pg, {Delta}sc0, and {Delta}eff sc0, which correspond to T* (pseudogap temperature), Tonset (onset temperature of fluctuating superconductivity), and Tc (critical temperature of coherent superconductivity). The results not only support the existence of a pseudogap state below T* that competes with superconductivity but also the duality of competition and superconducting fluctuation at momenta around the antinode below Tonset.