No Arabic abstract
The resonating valence bond spin liquid model for the underdoped cuprates has as an essential element, the emergence of a pseudogap. This new energy scale introduces asymmetry in the quasiparticle density of states because it is associated with the antiferromagnetic Brillouin zone. By contrast, superconductivity develops on the Fermi surface and this largely restores the particle-hole symmetry for energies below the superconducting energy gap scale. In the highly underdoped regime, these two scales can be separately identified in the density of states and also partial density of states for each fixed angle in the Brillouin zone. From the total density of states, we find that the pseudogap energy scale manifests itself differently as a function of doping for positive and negative bias. Furthermore, we find evidence from recent scanning tunneling spectroscopy data for asymmetry in the positive and negative bias of the extracted $Delta(theta)$ which is in qualitative agreement with this model. Likewise, the slope of the linear low energy density of states is nearly constant in the underdoped regime while it increases significantly with overdoping in agreement with the data.
The penetration depth is calculated over the entire doping range of the cuprate phase diagram with emphasis on the underdoped regime. Pseudogap formation on approaching the Mott transition, for doping below a quantum critical point, is described within a model based on the resonating valence bond spin liquid which provides an ansatz for the coherent piece of the Greens function. Fermi surface reconstruction, which is an essential element of the model, has a strong effect on the superfluid density at T=0 producing a sharp drop in magnitude, but does not change the slope of the linear low temperature variation. Comparison with recent data on Bi-based cuprates provides validation of the theory and shows that the effects of correlations, captured by Gutzwiller factors, are essential for a qualitative understanding of the data. We find that the Ferrell-Glover-Tinkham sum rule still holds and we compare our results with those for the Fermi arc and the nodal liquid models.
We report a detailed Raman scattering study of the lattice dynamics in detwinned single crystals of the underdoped high temperature superconductor YBa2Cu3O6+x (x=0.75, 0.6, 0.55 and 0.45). Whereas at room temperature the phonon spectra of these compounds are similar to that of optimally doped YBa2Cu3O6.99, additional Raman-active modes appear upon cooling below ~170-200 K in underdoped crystals. The temperature dependence of these new features indicates that they are associated with the incommensurate charge density wave state recently discovered using synchrotron x-ray scattering techniques on the same single crystals. Raman scattering has thus the potential to explore the evolution of this state under extreme conditions.
The phenomenological Greens function developed in the works of Yang, Rice and Zhang has been very successful in understanding many of the anomalous superconducting properties of the deeply underdoped cuprates. It is based on considerations of the resonating valence bond spin liquid approximation and is designed to describe the underdoped regime of the cuprates. Here we emphasize the region of doping, $x$, just below the quantum critical point at which the pseudogap develops. In addition to Luttinger hole pockets centered around the nodal direction, there are electron pockets near the antinodes which are connected to the hole pockets by gapped bridging contours. We determine the contours of nearest approach as would be measured in angular resolved photoemission experiments and emphasize signatures of the Fermi surface reconstruction from the large Fermi contour of Fermi liquid theory (which contains $1+x$ hole states) to the Luttinger pocket (which contains $x$ hole states). We find that the quasiparticle effective mass renormalization increases strongly towards the edge of the Luttinger pockets beyond which it diverges.
We propose a hybridization phenomenology to describe the pseudogap state of the underdoped cuprates. We show how a momentum independent pseudogap opens asymmetrically from the Fermi-surface but symmetric to the zeroes of the hybridized bonding dispersion, which results in false d-wave characteristics of the pseudogap at the Fermi level. By comparing against a d-wave form factor we illustrate the difficulty in identifying a momentum independent order in momentum averaged quantities such as the electronic Raman response. We identify a suppression in the single-particle density of states which produces a hump feature which should be observable experimentally in tunnelling $dI/dV$ spectra and distinguishes the s-wave and d-wave ordering scenarios.
Recent angle resolved photoemission cite{yang-nature-08} and scanning tunneling microscopy cite{kohsaka-nature-08} measurements on underdoped cuprates have yielded new spectroscopic information on quasiparticles in the pseudogap phase. New features of the normal state such as particle-hole asymmetry, maxima in the energy dispersion and accompanying drops in the spectral weight of quasiparticles agree with the ansatz of Yang textit{et al.} for the single particle propagator in the pseudogap phase. The coherent quasiparticle dispersion and reduced asymmetry in the tunneling density of states in the superconducting state can also be described by this propagator.