Spectroscopic Imaging Scanning Tunneling Microscopy Studies of Electronic Structure in the Superconducting and Pseudogap Phases of Cuprate High-<i>T</i><sub>c</sub>Superconductors

DOI DOI Web Site 7 Citations 114 References Open Access
  • Kazuhiro Fujita
    LASSP, Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, U.S.A.
  • Andrew R. Schmidt
    LASSP, Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, U.S.A.
  • Eun-Ah Kim
    LASSP, Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, U.S.A.
  • Michael J. Lawler
    LASSP, Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, U.S.A.
  • Dung Hai Lee
    Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, U.S.A.
  • J. C. Davis
    LASSP, Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, U.S.A.
  • Hiroshi Eisaki
    Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan
  • Shin-ichi Uchida
    Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan

Description

One of the key motivations for the development of atomically resolved spectroscopic imaging STM (SI-STM) has been to probe the electronic structure of cuprate high temperature superconductors. In both the d-wave superconducting (dSC) and the pseudogap (PG) phases of underdoped cuprates, two distinct classes of electronic states are observed using SI-STM. The first class consists of the dispersive Bogoliubov quasiparticles of a homogeneous d-wave superconductor. These are detected below a lower energy scale |E|=��0 and only upon a momentum space (k-space) arc which terminates near the lines connecting k=\pm(��/a0,0) to k=\pm(0, ��/a0). In both the dSC and PG phases, the only broken symmetries detected in the |E|\leq ��0 states are those of a d-wave superconductor. The second class of states occurs at energies near the pseudogap energy scale |E| ��1 which is associated conventionally with the 'antinodal' states near k=\pm(��/a0,0) and k=\pm(0, ��/a0). We find that these states break the 90o-rotational (C4) symmetry of electronic structure within CuO2 unit cells, at least down to 180o rotational (C2) symmetry (nematic) but in a spatially disordered fashion. This intra-unit-cell C4 symmetry breaking coexists at |E| ��1 with incommensurate conductance modulations locally breaking both rotational and translational symmetries (smectic). The properties of these two classes of |E| ��1 states are indistinguishable in the dSC and PG phases. To explain this segregation of k-space into the two regimes distinguished by the symmetries of their electronic states and their energy scales |E| ��1 and |E|\leq��0, and to understand how this impacts the electronic phase diagram and the mechanism of high-Tc superconductivity, represents one of a key challenges for cuprate studies.

45 pages, 12 figures

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