No Arabic abstract
New hot topic in ARPES on HTSC, the observation of the so called waterfalls, is addressed. The energy scale at about 0.2-0.3 eV that can be derived from the coherent component of ARPES spectra measured along the nodal direction is not new but has been already discussed in terms of a coupling to a bosonic continuum. However, the waterfalls, namely the long vertical parts of the experimental dispersion around the center of the Brillouin zone (BZ), seem to be purely artificial. They are a consequence of simple matrix-element effect: a complete suppression of the photoemission intensity from both the coherent and incoherent components. When the matrix-elements are taken into account, the latter reveals a grid-like structure along the bonding directions in the BZ.
We study the pump-probe response of three insulating cuprates and develop a model for its recombination kinetics. The dependence on time, fluence, and both pump and probe photon energies imply many-body recombination on femtosecond timescales, characterized by anomalously large trapping and Auger coefficients. The fluence dependence follows a universal form that includes a characteristic volume scale, which we associate with the holon-doublon excitation efficiency. This volume varies strongly with pump photon energy and peaks near twice the charge-transfer energy, suggesting that the variation is caused by carrier multiplication through impact ionization.
Within the microscopic theory of the normal-state pseudogap state, the doping and temperature dependence of the charge dynamics in doped cuprates is studied in the whole doping range from the underdoped to heavily overdoped. The conductivity spectrum in the underdoped and optimally doped regimes contains the low-energy non-Drude peak and unusual midinfrared band. However, the position of the midinfrared band shifts towards to the low-energy non-Drude peak with increasing doping. In particular, the low-energy non-Drude peak incorporates with the midinfrared band in the heavily overdoped regime, and then the low-energy Drude behavior recovers. It is shown that the striking behavior of the low-energy non-Drude peak and unusual midinfrared band in the underdoped and optimally doped regimes is closely related to the emergence of the doping and temperature dependence of the normal-state pseudogap.
We discuss the necessary symmetry conditions and the different ways in which they can be physically realized for the occurrence of ferromagnetism accompanying the loop current orbital magnetic order observed by polarized neutron-diffraction experiments or indeed any other conceivable principal order in the under-doped phase of cuprates. We contrast the Kerr effect experiments in single crystals observing ferromagnetism with the direct magnetization measurements in large powder samples, which do not observe it. We also suggest experiments to resolve the differences among the experiments, all of which we believe to be correct.
The enigmatic cuprate superconductors have attracted resurgent interest with several recent reports and discussions of competing orders in the underdoped side. Motivated by this, here we address the natural question of fragility of the d-wave superconducting state in underdoped cuprates. Using a combination of theoretical approaches we study t-J like models, and discover an - as yet unexplored - instability that is brought about by an internal (anti-symmetric mode) fluctuation of the d-wave state. This new theoretical result is in good agreement with recent STM and ARPES studies of cuprates. We also suggest experimental directions to uncover this physics.
Many puzzling properties of high-$T_c$ superconducting (HTSC) copper oxides have deep roots in the nature of the antinodal quasiparticles, the elementary excitations with wavevector parallel to the Cu-O bonds. These electronic states are most affected by the onset of antiferromagnetic correlations and charge instabilities and they host the maximum of the anisotropic superconducting gap and pseudogap. In this work, we use time-resolved extreme-ultra-violet (EUV) photoemission with proper photon energy (18 eV) and time-resolution (50 fs) to disclose the ultrafast dynamics of the antinodal states in a prototypical HTSC cuprate. After photoinducing a non-thermal charge redistribution within the Cu and O orbitals, we reveal a dramatic momentum-space differentiation of the transient electron dynamics. While the nodal quasi-particle distribution is heated up as in a conventional metal, new quasiparticle states transiently emerge at the antinodes, similarly to what is expected for a photoexcited Mott insulator, where the frozen charges can be released by an impulsive excitation. This transient antinodal metallicity is mapped into the dynamics of the O-2$p$ bands thus directly demonstrating the intertwining between the low- and high-energy scales that is typical of correlated materials. Our results suggest that the correlation-driven freezing of the electrons moving along the Cu-O bonds, analogous to the Mott localization mechanism, constitutes the starting point for any model of high-$T_c$ superconductivity and other exotic phases of HTSC cuprates.