No Arabic abstract
In cuprate superconductors, the doping of carriers into the parent Mott insulator induces superconductivity and various other phases whose characteristic temperatures are typically plotted versus the doping level $p$. In most materials, $p$ cannot be determined from the chemical composition, but it is derived from the superconducting transition temperature, $T_mathrm{c}$, using the assumption that $T_mathrm{c}$ dependence on doping is universal. Here, we present angle-resolved photoemission studies of Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+delta}$, cleaved and annealed in vacuum or in ozone to reduce or increase the doping from the initial value corresponding to $T_mathrm{c}=91$ K. We show that $p$ can be determined from the underlying Fermi surfaces and that $in-situ$ annealing allows mapping of a wide doping regime, covering the superconducting dome and the non-superconducting phase on the overdoped side. Our results show a surprisingly smooth dependence of the inferred Fermi surface with doping. In the highly overdoped regime, the superconducting gap approaches the value of $2Delta_0=(4pm1)k_mathrm{B}T_mathrm{c}$
Fluctuating superconductivity - vestigial Cooper pairing in the resistive state of a material - is usually associated with low dimensionality, strong disorder or low carrier density. Here, we report single particle spectroscopic, thermodynamic and magnetic evidence for persistent superconducting fluctuations in heavily hole-doped cuprate superconductor Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+delta}$ ($T_c$ = 66~K) despite the high carrier density. With a sign-problem free quantum Monte Carlo calculation, we show how a partially flat band at ($pi$,0) can help enhance superconducting phase fluctuations. Finally, we discuss the implications of an anisotropic band structure on the phase-coherence-limited superconductivity in overdoped cuprates and other superconductors.
The effects of structural supermodulation with the period $lambda approx26$ AA along the $b$-axis of Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+delta}$ have been observed in photoemission studies from the early days as the presence of diffraction replicas of the intrinsic electronic structure. Although predicted to affect the electronic structure of the Cu-O plane, the influence of supermodulation potential on Cu-O electrons has never been observed in photoemission. In the present study, we clearly see, for the first time, the effects on the Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+delta}$ electronic structure - we observe a hybridization of the intrinsic bands with the supermodulation replica bands in the form of avoided crossings and a corresponding reconstruction of the Fermi surface. We estimate the hybridization gap, $2Delta_hsim25$ meV in the slightly underdoped samples. The hybridization weakens with doping and the anti-crossing can no longer be resolved in strongly overdoped samples. In contrast, the shadow replica, shifted by $(pi, pi)$, is found not to hybridize with the original bands within our detection limits.
In the present work, we report the new findings on the doping level dependence of the phase coherence between superconducting Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+delta}$ (Bi-2212) grains. The experimental results from the strongly underdoped and overdoped regimes deviated from the expectation based on the doping level dependence of the superfluid density at $T$ = 0 K. These findings appear to be governed by interplay between competing orders inside the superconducting dome of cuprate superconductors. Two quantum critical points are likely to exist at the underdoped and overdoped regimes beneath the superconducting dome.
Establishing the presence and the nature of a quantum critical point in their phase diagram is a central enigma of the high-temperature superconducting cuprates. It could explain their pseudogap and strange metal phases, and ultimately their high superconducting temperatures. Yet, while solid evidences exist in several unconventional superconductors of ubiquitous critical fluctuations associated to a quantum critical point, in the cuprates they remain undetected until now. Here using symmetry-resolved electronic Raman scattering in the cuprate Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+delta}$, we report the observation of enhanced electronic nematic fluctuations near the endpoint of the pseudogap phase. While our data hint at the possible presence of an incipient nematic quantum critical point, the doping dependence of the nematic fluctuations deviates significantly from a canonical quantum critical scenario. The observed nematic instability rather appears to be tied to the presence of a van Hove singularity in the band structure.
Bi-based cuprate superconductors are important materials for both fundamental research and applications. As in other cuprates, the superconducting phase in the Bi compounds lies close to an antiferromagnetic phase. Our density functional theory calculations based on the strongly-constrained-and-appropriately-normed (SCAN) exchange correlation functional in Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+delta}$ reveal the persistence of magnetic moments on the copper ions for oxygen concentrations ranging from the pristine phase to the optimally hole-doped compound. We also find the existence of ferrimagnetic solutions in the heavily doped compounds, which are expected to suppress superconductivity.