No Arabic abstract
The minimal ingredients to explain the essential physics of layered copper-oxide (cuprates= materials remains heavily debated. Effective low energy single-band models of the copper-oxygen orbitals are widely used because there exists no strong experimental evidence supporting multiband structures. Here we report angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy experiments on La-based cuprates that provide direct observation of a two-band structure. This electronic structure, qualitatively consistent with density functional theory, is parametrised by a two-orbital ($d_{x^2-y^2}$ and $d_{z^2}$) tight-binding model. We quantify the orbital hybridisation which provides an explanation for the Fermi surface topology and the proximity of the van-Hove singularity to the Fermi level. Our analysis leads to a unification of electronic hopping parameters for single-layer cuprates and we conclude that hybridisation, restraining d-wave pairing, is an important optimisation element for superconductivity.
The upper critical field Hc2 is a fundamental measure of the pairing strength, yet there is no agreement on its magnitude and doping dependence in cuprate superconductors. We have used thermal conductivity as a direct probe of Hc2 in the cuprates YBa2Cu3Oy and YBa2Cu4O8 to show that there is no vortex liquid at T = 0, allowing us to use high-field resistivity measurements to map out the doping dependence of Hc2 across the phase diagram. Hc2(p) exhibits two peaks, each located at a critical point where the Fermi surface undergoes a transformation. The condensation energy obtained directly from Hc2, and previous Hc1 data, undergoes a 20-fold collapse below the higher critical point. These data provide quantitative information on the impact of competing phases in suppressing superconductivity in cuprates.
A resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) study of overdamped spin-excitations in slightly underdoped La$_{2-x}$Sr$_{x}$CuO$_4$ (LSCO) with $x=0.12$ and $0.145$ is presented. Three high-symmetry directions have been investigated: (1) the antinodal $(0,0)rightarrow (1/2,0)$, (2) the nodal $(0,0)rightarrow (1/4,1/4)$ and (3) the zone boundary direction $(1/2,0)rightarrow (1/4,1/4)$ connecting these two. The overdamped excitations exhibit strong dispersions along (1) and (3), whereas a much more modest dispersion is found along (2). This is in strong contrast to the undoped compound La$_{2}$CuO$_4$ (LCO) for which the strongest dispersions are found along (1) and (2). The $t-t^{prime}-t^{primeprime}-U$ Hubbard model used to explain the excitation spectrum of LCO predicts $-$ for constant $U/t$ $-$ that the dispersion along (3) scales with $(t^{prime}/t)^2$. However, the diagonal hopping $t^{prime}$ extracted on LSCO using single-band models is low ($t^{prime}/tsim-0.16$) and decreasing with doping. We therefore invoked a two-orbital ($d_{x^2-y^2}$ and $d_{z^2}$) model which implies that $t^{prime}$ is enhanced. This effect acts to enhance the zone-boundary dispersion within the Hubbard model. We thus conclude that hybridization of $d_{x^2-y^2}$ and $d_{z^2}$ states has a significant impact on the zone-boundary dispersion in LSCO.
We report measurements of the phase of the conductivity, $phi_sigmaequiv arg(sigma)$, in the normal state of a $Bi_{2}Sr_{2}CaCu_{2}O_{8+delta}$ (BSCCO) thin film from 0.2-1.0 THz. From $phi_sigma$ we obtain the time delay of the current response, $tau_sigmaequivphi_sigma/omega$. After discovering a systematic error in the data analysis, the extracted $tau_sigma$ has changed from that reported earlier. The revised data is shown in the sole figure below. Analysis and discussion of these data will follow.
The behaviour of electrons in solids is remarkably well described by Landaus Fermi-liquid theory, which says that even though electrons in a metal interact they can still be treated as well-defined fermions, called ``quasiparticles. At low temperature, the ability of quasiparticles to transport heat is strictly given by their ability to transport charge, via a universal relation known as the Wiedemann-Franz law, which no material in nature has been known to violate. High-temperature superconductors have long been thought to fall outside the realm of Fermi-liquid theory, as suggested by several anomalous properties, but this has yet to be shown conclusively. Here we report on the first experimental test of the Wiedemann-Franz law in a cuprate superconductor, (Pr,Ce)$_2$CuO$_4$. Our study reveals a clear departure from the universal law and provides compelling evidence for the breakdown of Fermi-liquid theory in high-temperature superconductors.
Electronic correlations were long suggested not only to be responsible for the complexity of many novel materials, but also to form essential prerequisites for their intriguing properties. Electronic behavior of iron-based superconductors is far from conventional, while the reason for that is not yet understood. Here we present a combined study of the electronic spectrum in the iron-based superconductor FeSe by means of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and dynamical mean field theory (DMFT). Both methods in unison reveal strong deviations of the spectrum from single-electron approximation for the whole 3$d$ band of iron: not only the well separated coherent and incoherent parts of the spectral weight are observed, but also a noticeable dispersion of the lower Hubbard band (LHB) is clearly present. This way we demonstrate correlations of the most puzzling intermediate coupling strength in iron superconductors.