We report and analyze in-plane penetration depth measurements in YBa2Cu3O7-x taken close to the critical temperature Tc. In underdoped YBa2Cu3O6:59 we find consistent evidence for charged critical behavior. Noting that the effective dimensionless charge scales as 1/sqrt(Tc), this new critical behavior should be generically observable in suitably underdoped cuprates.
The preformed-pairs theory of pseudogap physics in high-$T_C$ superconductors predicts a nonanalytic $T$-dependence for the $ab$-plane superfluid fraction, $rho_S$, at low temperatures in underdoped cuprates. We report high-precision measurements of $rho_S(T)$ on severely underdoped YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{6+x}$ and Y$_{0.8}$Ca$_{0.2}$Ba$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{6+x}$ films. At low $T$, $rho_S$ looks more like $1 - T^2$ than $1 - T^{3/2}$, in disagreement with theory.
By comparison of recent direct measurements of the temperature dependence of the upper critical field $H_{c2}$ in an Y-123 high temperature superconductor with the scaling analysis of magnetization data, collected in fields H << H_c2, we demonstrate that that the temperature dependence of the Ginzburg-Landau parameter kappa is negligible. Another conclusion is that the normalized temperature dependence of H_c2 is independent of the orientation of the magnetic field in respect to crystallographic axes of the sample. We also discuss that isotropy of the temperature dependence of H_c2 straightforwardly follows from the Ginzburg-Landau theory if kappa does not depend on temperature.
Evidence of two-dimensional (2D) quantum critical fluctuations is observed in the superfluid density ns(T) propto $lambda$ -2(T) of deeply underdoped Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x (Bi-2212) films, indicating that quantum fluctuations play a dominant role in underdoped cuprates in general. 2D fluctuations are expressed by the linear scaling, Tc propto ns(0). 2D scaling in Bi-2212 contrasts with 3D scaling seen in the much less anisotropic YBa2Cu3O7-x. Quantum critical fluctuations could also account for the absence of thermal critical behavior in lambda^{-2}(T) of strongly underdoped Bi-2212 samples, Tc < 48 K.
We report a polarized neutron scattering study of the orbital-like magnetic order in strongly underdoped ${rm YBa_2Cu_3O_{6.45}}$ and ${rm YBa_2(Cu_{0.98}Zn_{0.02})_3O_{6.6}}$. Their hole doping levels are located on both sides of the critical doping $p_{MI}$ of a metal-insulator transition inferred from transport measurements. Our study reveals a drop down of the orbital-like order slightly below $p_{MI}$ with a steep decrease of both the ordering temperature $T_{mag}$ and the ordered moment. Above $p_{MI}$, substitution of quantum impurities does not change $T_{mag}$, whereas it lowers significantly the bulk ordered moment. The modifications of the orbital-like magnetic order are interpreted in terms of a competition with electronic liquid crystal phases around $p_{MI}$. This competition gives rise to a mixed magnetic state in ${rm YBa_2Cu_3O_{6.45}}$ and a phase separation in ${rm YBa_2(Cu_{0.98}Zn_{0.02})_3O_{6.6}}$.
The magnetic spectrum at high-energies in heavily underdoped YBa$_{2}$Cu$_{3}$O$_{6.35}$ (T$_{c}$=18 K) has been determined throughout the Brillouin zone. At low-energy the scattering forms a cone of spin excitations emanating from the antiferromagnetic (0.5, 0.5) wave vector with an acoustic velocity similar to that of insulating cuprates. At high energy transfers, below the maximum energy of 270 meV at (0.5, 0), we observe zone boundary dispersion much larger and spectral weight loss more extensive than in insulating antiferromagnets. Moreover we report phenomena not found in insulators, an overall lowering of the zone-boundary energies and a large damping of $sim$ 100 meV of the spin excitations at high-energies. The energy above which the damping occurs coincides approximately with the gap determined from transport measurements. We propose that as the energy is raised the spin excitations encounter an extra channel of decay into particle-hole pairs of a continuum that we associate with the pseudogap.