No Arabic abstract
Recent excperiments (ARPES, Raman) suggest the presence of two distinct energy gaps in high-Tc superconductors (HTSC), exhibiting different doping dependences. Results of a variational cluster approach to the superconducting state of the two-dimensional Hubbard model are presented which show that this model qualitatively describes this gap dichotomy: One gap (antinodal) increases with less doping, a behavior long considered as reflecting the general gap behavior of the HTSC. On the other hand, the near-nodal gap does even slightly decrease with underdoping. An explanation of this unexpected behavior is given which emphasizes the crucial role of spin fluctuations in the pairing mechanism.
Relationship between the superconducting gap and the pseudogap has been the subject of controversies. In order to clarify this issue, we have studied the superconducting gap and pseudogap of the high-Tc superconductor La2-xSrxCuO4 (x=0.10, 0.14) by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). Through the analysis of the ARPES spectra above and below Tc, we have identified a superconducting coherence peak even in the anti-nodal region on top of the pseudogap of a larger energy scale. The superconducting peak energy nearly follows the pure d-wave form. The d-wave order parameter Delta_0 [defined by Delta(k)=Delta_0(cos(kxa)-cos(kya)) ] for x=0.10 and 0.14 are nearly the same, Delta_0 ~ 12-14 meV, leading to strong coupling 2Delta_0/kB Tc ~ 10. The present result indicates that the pseudogap and the superconducting gap are distinct phenomena and can be described by the two-gap scenario.
We have investigated the doping and temperature dependences of the pseudogap/superconducting gap in the single-layer cuprate La$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$CuO$_4$ by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. The results clearly exhibit two distinct energy and temperature scales, namely, the gap around ($pi$,0) of magnitude $Delta^*$ and the gap around the node characterized by the d-wave order parameter $Delta_0$, like the double-layer cuprate Bi2212. In comparison with Bi2212 having higher $T_c$s, $Delta_0$ is smaller, while $Delta^*$ and $T^*$ are similar. This result suggests that $Delta^*$ and $T^*$ are approximately material-independent properties of a single CuO$_2$ plane, in contrast the material-dependent $Delta_0$, representing the pairing strength.
We apply the recent wavepacket formalism developed by Ossadnik to describe the origin of the short range ordered pseudogap state as the hole doping is lowered through a critical density in cuprates. We argue that the energy gain that drives this precursor state to Mott localization, follows from maximizing umklapp scattering near the Fermi energy. To this end we show how energy gaps driven by umklapp scattering can open on an appropriately chosen surface, as proposed earlier by Yang, Rice and Zhang. The key feature is that the pairing instability includes umklapp scattering, leading to an energy gap not only in the single particle spectrum but also in the pair spectrum. As a result the superconducting gap at overdoping is turned into an insulating pseudogap, in the antinodal parts of the Fermi surface.
We present a new method to treat the two-dimensional (2D) Hubbard model for parameter regimes which are relevant for the physics of the high-$T_c$ superconducting cuprates. Unlike previous attempts to attack this problem, our new approach takes into account all fluctuations in different channels on equal footing and is able to treat reasonable large lattice sizes up to 32x32. This is achieved by the following three-step procedure: (i) We transform the original problem to a new representation (dual fermions) in which all purely local correlation effects from the dynamical mean field theory are already considered in the bare propagator and bare interaction of the new problem. (ii) The strong $1/(i u)^2$ decay of the bare propagator allows us to integrate out all higher Matsubara frequencies besides the lowest using low order diagrams. The new effective action depends only on the two lowest Matsubara frequencies which allows us to, (iii) apply the two-particle self-consistent parquet formalism, which takes into account the competition between different low-energy bosonic modes in an unbiased way, on much finer momentum grids than usual. In this way, we were able to map out the phase diagram of the 2D Hubbard model as a function of temperature and doping. Consistently with the experimental evidence for hole-doped cuprates and previous dynamical cluster approximation calculations, we find an antiferromagnetic region at low-doping and a superconducting dome at higher doping. Our results also support the role of the van Hove singularity as an important ingredient for the high value of $T_c$ at optimal doping. At small doping, the destruction of antiferromagnetism is accompanied by an increase of charge fluctuations supporting the scenario of a phase separated state driven by quantum critical fluctuations.
One of the biggest puzzles concerning the cuprate high temperature superconductors is what determines the maximum transition temperature (Tc,max), which varies from less than 30 K to above 130 K in different compounds. Despite this dramatic variation, a robust trend is that within each family, the double-layer compound always has higher Tc,max than the single-layer counterpart. Here we use scanning tunneling microscopy to investigate the electronic structure of four cuprate parent compounds belonging to two different families. We find that within each family, the double layer compound has a much smaller charge transfer gap size ($Delta_{CT}$), indicating a clear anticorrelation between $Delta_{CT}$ and Tc,max. These results suggest that the charge transfer gap plays a key role in the superconducting physics of cuprates, which shed important new light on the high Tc mechanism from doped Mott insulator perspective.