No Arabic abstract
In conventional BCS superconductors, the electronic kinetic energy increases upon superfluid condensation (the change DEkin is positive). Here we show that in the high critical temperature superconductor Bi-2212, DEkin crosses over from a fully compatible conventional BCS behavior (DEkin>0) to an unconventional behavior (DEkin<0) as the free carrier density decreases. If a single mechanism is responsible for superconductivity across the whole phase diagram of high critical temperature superconductors, this mechanism should allow for a smooth transition between such two regimes around optimal doping.
Within the framework of the kinetic energy driven superconducting mechanism, the effect of the extended impurity scatterers on the quasiparticle transport of cuprate superconductors in the superconducting state is studied based on the nodal approximation of the quasiparticle excitations and scattering processes. It is shown that there is a cusplike shape of the energy dependent microwave conductivity spectrum. At low temperatures, the microwave conductivity increases linearly with increasing temperatures, and reaches a maximum at intermediate temperature, then decreases with increasing temperatures at high temperatures. In contrast with the dome shape of the doping dependent superconducting gap parameter, the minimum microwave conductivity occurs around the optimal doping, and then increases in both underdoped and overdoped regimes.
The spectral energy gap is an important signature that defines states of quantum matter: insulators, density waves, and superconductors have very different gap structures. The momentum resolved nature of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) makes it a powerful tool to characterize spectral gaps. ARPES has been instrumental in establishing the anisotropic d-wave structure of the superconducting gap in high-transition temperature (Tc) cuprates, which is different from the conventional isotropic s-wave superconducting gap. Shortly afterwards, ARPES demonstrated that an anomalous gap above Tc, often termed the pseudogap, follows a similar anisotropy. The nature of this poorly understood pseudogap and its relationship with superconductivity has since become the focal point of research in the field. To address this issue, the momentum, temperature, doping, and materials dependence of spectral gaps have been extensively examined with significantly improved instrumentation and carefully matched experiments in recent years. This article overviews the current understanding and unresolved issues of the basic phenomenology of gap hierarchy. We show how ARPES has been sensitive to phase transitions, has distinguished between orders having distinct broken electronic symmetries, and has uncovered rich momentum and temperature dependent fingerprints reflecting an intertwined & competing relationship between the ordered states and superconductivity that results in multiple phenomenologically-distinct ground states inside the superconducting dome. These results provide us with microscopic insights into the cuprate phase diagram.
If high temperature cuprate superconductivity is due to electronic correlations, then the energy difference between the normal and superconducting states can be expressed in terms of the occupied part of the single particle spectral function. The latter can, in principle, be determined from angle resolved photoemission (ARPES) data. As a consequence, the energy gain driving the development of the superconducting state is intimately related to the dramatic changes in the photoemission lineshape when going below Tc. These points are illustrated in the context of the mode model used to fit ARPES data in the normal and superconducting states, where the question of kinetic energy versus potential energy driven superconductivity is explored in detail. We use our findings to comment on the relation of ARPES data to the condensation energy, and to various other experimental data. In particular, our results suggest that the nature of the superconducting transition is strongly related to how anomalous (non Fermi liquid like) the normal state spectral function is, and as such, is dependent upon the doping level.
Starting from a spin-fermion model for the cuprate superconductors, we obtain an effective interaction for the charge carriers by integrating out the spin degrees of freedom. Our model predicts a quantum critical point for the superconducting interaction coupling, which sets up a threshold for the onset of superconductivity in the system. We show that the physical value of this coupling is below this threshold, thus explaining why there is no superconducting phase for the undoped system. Then, by including doping, we find a dome-shaped dependence of the critical temperature as charge carriers are added to the system, in agreement with the experimental phase diagram. The superconducting critical temperature is calculated without adjusting any free parameter and yields, at optimal doping $ T_c sim $ 45 K, which is comparable to the experimental data.
We report optical spectroscopic measurements on electron- and hole-doped BaFe2As2. We show that the compounds in the normal state are not simple metals. The optical conductivity spectra contain, in addition to the free carrier response at low frequency, a temperature-dependent gap-like suppression at rather high energy scale near 0.6 eV. This suppression evolves with the As-Fe-As bond angle induced by electron- or hole-doping. Furthermore, the feature becomes much weaker in the Fe-chalcogenide compounds. We elaborate that the feature is caused by the strong Hunds rule coupling effect between the itinerant electrons and localized electron moment arising from the multiple Fe 3d orbitals. Our experiments demonstrate the coexistence of itinerant and localized electrons in iron-based compounds, which would then lead to a more comprehensive picture about the metallic magnetism in the materials.