No Arabic abstract
Understanding the thermodynamic properties of high-$T_c$ cuprate superconductors is a key step to establish a satisfactory theory of these materials. The electronic specific heat is highly unconventional, distinctly non-BCS, with remarkable doping-dependent features extending well beyond $T_c$. The pairon concept, bound holes in their local antiferromagnetic environment, has successfully described the tunneling and photoemission spectra. In this article, we show that the model explains the distinctive features of the entropy and specific heat throughout the temperature-doping phase diagram. Their interpretation connects unambiguously the pseudogap, existing up to $T^*$, to the superconducting state below $T_c$. In the underdoped case, the specific heat is dominated by pairon excitations, following Bose statistics, while with increasing doping, both bosonic excitations and fermionic quasiparticles coexist.
We report specific heat under different magnetic fields for recently discovered quasi-one dimensional Nb2PdS5 superconductor. The studied compound is superconducting below 6 K. Nb2PdS5 is quite robust against magnetic field with dHc/dT of -42 kOe/K. The estimated upper critical field [Hc2(0)] is 190 kOe, clearly surpassing the Pauli-paramagnetic limit of 1.84Tc. Low temperature heat capacity in superconducting state of Nb2PdS5 under different magnetic fields showed s-wave superconductivity with two different gaps. Two quasi-linear slopes in Somerfield-coefficient as a function of applied magnetic field and two band behavior of the electronic heat capacity demonstrate that Nb2PdS5 is a multiband su-perconductor in weak coupling limit with deltagamma/deltaTc=0.9.
In order to understand the material dependence of $T_c$ within the single-layered cuprates, we study a two-orbital model that considers both $d_{x^2-y^2}$ and $d_{z^2}$ orbitals. We reveal that a hybridization of $d_{z^2}$ on the Fermi surface substantially affects $T_c$ in the cuprates, where the energy difference $Delta E$ between the $d_{x^2-y2}$ and $d_{z^2}$ orbitals is identified to be the key parameter that governs both the hybridization and the shape of the Fermi surface. A smaller $Delta E$ tends to suppress $T_c$ through a larger hybridization, whose effect supersedes the effect of diamond-shaped (better-nested) Fermi surface. The mechanism of the suppression of d-wave superconductivity due to $d_{z^2}$ orbital mixture is clarified from the viewpoint of the ingredients involved in the Eliashberg equation, i.e., the Greens functions and the form of the pairing interaction described in the orbital representation. The conclusion remains qualitatively the same if we take a three-orbital model that incorporates Cu 4s orbital explicitly, where the 4s orbital is shown to have an important effect of making the Fermi surface rounded. We have then identified the origin of the material and lattice-structure dependence of $Delta E$, which is shown to be determined by the energy difference $Delta E_d$ between the two Cu3d orbitals (primarily governed by the apical oxygen height), and the energy difference $Delta E_p$ between the in-plane and apical oxygens (primarily governed by the interlayer separation $d$).
The specific heat of the superconducting cuprates is calculated over the entire phase diagram. A d-wave BCS approach based on the large Fermi surface of Fermi liquid and band structure theory provides a good description of the overdoped region. At underdoping it is essential to include the emergence of a second energy scale, the pseudogap and its associated Gutzwiller factor, which accounts for a reduction in the coherent piece of the electronic Greens function due to increased correlations as the Mott insulating state is approached. In agreement with experiment, we find that the slope of the linear in T dependence of the low temperature specific heat rapidly increases above optimum doping while it is nearly constant below optimum. Our theoretical calculations also agree with recent data on Bi$_2$Sr$_{2-rm x}$La$_{rm x}$CuO$_{6+delta}$ for which the normal state is accessed through the application of a large magnetic field. A quantum critical point is located at a doping slightly below optimum.
Although charge density waves (CDWs) are omnipresent in cuprate high-temperature superconductors, they occur at significantly different wavevectors, confounding efforts to understand their formation mechanism. Here, we use resonant inelastic x-ray scattering to investigate the doping- and temperature-dependent CDW evolution in La2-xBaxCuO4 (x=0.115-0.155). We discovered that the CDW develops in two stages with decreasing temperature. A precursor CDW with quasi-commensurate wavevector emerges first at high-temperature. This doping-independent precursor CDW correlation originates from the CDW phase mode coupled with a phonon and seeds the low-temperature CDW with strongly doping dependent wavevector. Our observation reveals the precursor CDW and its phase mode as the building blocks of the highly intertwined electronic ground state in the cuprates.
We present a comprehensive study of the evolution of the nematic electronic structure of FeSe using high resolution angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), quantum oscillations in the normal state and elastoresistance measurements. Our high resolution ARPES allows us to track the Fermi surface deformation from four-fold to two-fold symmetry across the structural transition at ~87 K which is stabilized as a result of the dramatic splitting of bands associated with dxz and dyz character. The low temperature Fermi surface is that a compensated metal consisting of one hole and two electron bands and is fully determined by combining the knowledge from ARPES and quantum oscillations. A manifestation of the nematic state is the significant increase in the nematic susceptibility as approaching the structural transition that we detect from our elastoresistance measurements on FeSe. The dramatic changes in electronic structure cannot be explained by the small lattice effects and, in the absence of magnetic fluctuations above the structural transition, points clearly towards an electronically driven transition in FeSe stabilized by orbital-charge ordering.