No Arabic abstract
Evidence that the pseudogap (PG) in a near-optimally doped Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+delta}$ sample destroys the BCS logarithmic pairing instability [1] raises again the question of the role of the PG in the high-temperature superconducting cuprates [2]. The elimination of the BCS instability is consistent with the view that the PG competes with superconductivity. However, as noted in [1], the onset of superconductivity with a $T_c sim 90$ K suggests an alternative scenario in which the PG reflects the formation of short range pairing correlations. Here, we report results obtained from a dynamic cluster quantum Monte Carlo approximation (DCA) for a 2D Hubbard model and conclude that (1) the PG, like the superconductivity, arises due to short-range antiferromagnetic correlations and (2) contrary to the usual case in which the pairing instability arises from the Cooper instability, here, the strength of the spin-fluctuations increases as the temperature decreases leading to the pairing instability.
We use Angle Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy (ARPES) to study the relationship between the pseudogap, pairing and Fermi arcs in cuprates. High quality data measured over a wide range of dopings reveals a consistent picture of Fermiology and pairing in these materials. The pseudogap is due to an ordered state that competes with superconductivity rather then preformed pairs. Pairing does occur below Tpair~150K and significantly above Tc, but well below T* and the doping dependence of this temperature scale is distinct from that of the pseudogap. The d-wave gap is present below Tpair, and its interplay with strong scattering creates artificial Fermi arcs for Tc<T<Tpair. However, above Tpair, the pseudogap exists only at the antipodal region. This leads to presence of real, gapless Fermi arcs close to the node. The length of these arcs remains constant up to T*, where the full Fermi surface is recovered. We demonstrate that these findings resolve a number of seemingly contradictory scenarios.
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}).
We study the effect of critical pairing fluctuations on the electronic properties in the normal state of a clean superconductor in three dimensions. Using a functional renormalization group approach to take the non-Gaussian nature of critical fluctuations into account, we show microscopically that in the BCS regime, where the inverse coherence length is much smaller than the Fermi wavevector, critical pairing fluctuations give rise to a non-analytic contribution to the quasi-particle damping of order $ T_c sqrt{Gi} ln ( 80 / Gi )$, where the Ginzburg-Levanyuk number $Gi$ is a dimensionless measure for the width of the critical region. As a consequence, there is a temperature window above $T_c$ where the quasiparticle damping due to critical pairing fluctuations can be larger than the usual $T^2$-Fermi liquid damping due to non-critical scattering processes. On the other hand, in the strong coupling regime where $Gi$ is of order unity, we find that the quasiparticle damping due to critical pairing fluctuations is proportional to the temperature. Moreover, we show that in the vicinity of the critical temperature $T_c$ the electronic density of states exhibits a fluctuation-induced pseudogap. We also use functional renormalization group methods to derive and classify various types of processes induced by the pairing interaction in Fermi systems close to the superconducting instability.
Unveiling the nature of the pseudogap and its relation to both superconductivity and antiferromagnetic Mott insulators, the pairing mechanism, and a non-Fermi liquid phase is a key issue for understanding high temperature superconductivity in cuprates. A number of experimental results gathered especially in recently years have revealed an unexpected inhomogeneous nature of cuprates at the nanoscale, indicating the fundamental inapplicability of the conventional theories based on homogeneous systems. Here we show a microscopic model of pseudogap and pairing mechanisms on the basis of the consideration of the spin state around a bound hole in a CuO2 plane and the resulting magnetic orders, leading eventually to the spin-Peierls distortion responsible for the Cooper pair formation. The present model fits and accounts for the accumulated experimental findings reported previously for cuprates, including stripe-like electronic order, breaking of the rotational symmetry, and the so-called 1/8 anomaly. We believe that the present model can help to develop a complete theoretical framework applicable to a large family of high-temperature superconductors, including ferropnictides and ferrochalcogenides.
Recent experiments on certain Fe-based superconductors have hinted at a role for paired electrons in incipient bands that are close to, but do not cross the Fermi level. Related theoretical works disagree on whether or not strong-coupling superconductivity is required to explain such effects, and whether a critical interaction strength exists. In this work, we consider vario