The physics of underdoped copper oxide superconductors, including the pseudogap, spin and charge ordering and their relation to superconductivity, is intensely debated. The overdoped copper oxides ...are perceived as simpler, with strongly correlated fermion physics evolving smoothly into the conventional Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer behaviour. Pioneering studies on a few overdoped samples indicated that the superfluid density was much lower than expected, but this was attributed to pair-breaking, disorder and phase separation. Here we report the way in which the magnetic penetration depth and the phase stiffness depend on temperature and doping by investigating the entire overdoped side of the La2-xSrxCuO4 phase diagram. We measured the absolute values of the magnetic penetration depth and the phase stiffness to an accuracy of one per cent in thousands of samples; the large statistics reveal clear trends and intrinsic properties. The films are homogeneous; variations in the critical superconducting temperature within a film are very small (less than one kelvin). At every level of doping the phase stiffness decreases linearly with temperature. The dependence of the zero-temperature phase stiffness on the critical superconducting temperature is generally linear, but with an offset; however, close to the origin this dependence becomes parabolic. This scaling law is incompatible with the standard Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer description.
The origin of high-temperature superconductivity in copper oxides and the nature of the 'normal' state above the critical temperature are widely debated. In underdoped copper oxides, this normal ...state hosts a pseudogap and other anomalous features; and in the overdoped materials, the standard Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer description fails, challenging the idea that the normal state is a simple Fermi liquid. To investigate these questions, we have studied the behaviour of single-crystal La
Sr
CuO
films through which an electrical current is being passed. Here we report that a spontaneous voltage develops across the sample, transverse (orthogonal) to the electrical current. The dependence of this voltage on probe current, temperature, in-plane device orientation and doping shows that this behaviour is intrinsic, substantial, robust and present over a broad range of temperature and doping. If the current direction is rotated in-plane by an angle ϕ, the transverse voltage oscillates as sin(2ϕ), breaking the four-fold rotational symmetry of the crystal. The amplitude of the oscillations is strongly peaked near the critical temperature for superconductivity and decreases with increasing doping. We find that these phenomena are manifestations of unexpected in-plane anisotropy in the electronic transport. The films are very thin and epitaxially constrained to be tetragonal (that is, with four-fold symmetry), so one expects a constant resistivity and zero transverse voltage, for every ϕ. The origin of this anisotropy is purely electronic-the so-called electronic nematicity. Unusually, the nematic director is not aligned with the crystal axes, unless a substantial orthorhombic distortion is imposed. The fact that this anisotropy occurs in a material that exhibits high-temperature superconductivity may not be a coincidence.
High-temperature superconductivity in copper oxides arises when a parent insulator compound is doped beyond some critical concentration; what exactly happens at this superconductor-insulator ...transition is a key open question. The cleanest approach is to tune the carrier density using the electric field effect; for example, it was learned in this way that weak electron localization transforms superconducting SrTiO(3) into a Fermi-glass insulator. But in the copper oxides this has been a long-standing technical challenge, because perfect ultrathin films and huge local fields (>10(9) V m(-1)) are needed. Recently, such fields have been obtained using electrolytes or ionic liquids in the electric double-layer transistor configuration. Here we report synthesis of epitaxial films of La(2- x)Sr(x)CuO(4) that are one unit cell thick, and fabrication of double-layer transistors. Very large fields and induced changes in surface carrier density enable shifts in the critical temperature by up to 30 K. Hundreds of resistance versus temperature and carrier density curves were recorded and shown to collapse onto a single function, as predicted for a two-dimensional superconductor-insulator transition. The observed critical resistance is precisely the quantum resistance for pairs, R(Q) = h/(2e) = 6.45 kΩ, suggestive of a phase transition driven by quantum phase fluctuations, and Cooper pair (de)localization.
The detection of individual quanta of light is important for quantum communication, fluorescence lifetime imaging, remote sensing and more. Due to their high detection efficiency, exceptional ...signal-to-noise ratio and fast recovery times, superconducting-nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) have become a critical component in these applications. However, the operation of conventional SNSPDs requires costly cryocoolers. Here we report the fabrication of two types of high-temperature superconducting nanowires. We observe linear scaling of the photon count rate on the radiation power at the telecommunications wavelength of 1.5 μm and thereby reveal single-photon operation. SNSPDs made from thin flakes of Bi
Sr
CaCu
O
exhibit a single-photon response up to 25 K, and for SNSPDs from La
Sr
CuO
/La
CuO
bilayer films, this response is observed up to 8 K. While the underlying detection mechanism is not fully understood yet, our work expands the family of materials for SNSPD technology beyond the liquid helium temperature limit and suggests that even higher operation temperatures may be reached using other high-temperature superconductors.
The realization of high-transition-temperature (high-Tc) superconductivity confined to nanometre-sized interfaces has been a long-standing goal because of potential applications and the opportunity ...to study quantum phenomena in reduced dimensions. This has been, however, a challenging target: in conventional metals, the high electron density restricts interface effects (such as carrier depletion or accumulation) to a region much narrower than the coherence length, which is the scale necessary for superconductivity to occur. By contrast, in copper oxides the carrier density is low whereas Tc is high and the coherence length very short, which provides an opportunity-but at a price: the interface must be atomically perfect. Here we report superconductivity in bilayers consisting of an insulator (La2CuO4) and a metal (La1.55Sr0.45CuO4), neither of which is superconducting in isolation. In these bilayers, Tc is either ∼15 K or ∼30 K, depending on the layering sequence. This highly robust phenomenon is confined within 2-3 nm of the interface. If such a bilayer is exposed to ozone, Tc exceeds 50 K, and this enhanced superconductivity is also shown to originate from an interface layer about 1-2 unit cells thick. Enhancement of Tc in bilayer systems was observed previously but the essential role of the interface was not recognized at the time.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The anomalous metallic state in the high-temperature superconducting cuprates is masked by superconductivity near a quantum critical point. Applying high magnetic fields to suppress superconductivity ...has enabled detailed studies of the normal state, yet the direct effect of strong magnetic fields on the metallic state is poorly understood. We report the high-field magnetoresistance of thin-film La
Sr
CuO
cuprate in the vicinity of the critical doping, 0.161 ≤
≤ 0.190. We find that the metallic state exposed by suppressing superconductivity is characterized by magnetoresistance that is linear in magnetic fields up to 80 tesla. The magnitude of the linear-in-field resistivity mirrors the magnitude and doping evolution of the well-known linear-in-temperature resistivity that has been associated with quantum criticality in high-temperature superconductors.
Various electronic phases displayed by cuprates that exhibit high temperature superconductivity continue to attract much interest. We provide a short review of several experiments that we have ...performed aimed at investigating the superconducting state in these compounds. Measurements on single-phase films, bilayers, and superlattices all point to the conclusion that the high-temperature superconductivity (HTS) in these materials is an essentially quasi-two dimensional phenomenon. With proper control over the film growth, HTS can exist in a single copper oxide plane with the critical temperatures as high as that achieved in the bulk samples.
•In the cuprates an unusual superconducting state is discovered.•The critical temperature is determined by the superfluid density.•These finding defy the standard Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer ...theory.•The metallic state above Tc is also anomalous (‘nematic’).
Over the course of three decades of intense study, apart from the exceptionally high critical temperature, many unusual properties of cuprates have been discovered, notably including resistivity linear in temperature, electronic Raman continuum and optical absorption extending throughout the infrared region, pseudogap, hour-glass spin excitation spectrum, etc. However, each of these features have been also observed in other materials, including some that are not even superconducting at all. Here, we describe an extensive experiment in which over 2000 films of the La2−xSrxCuO4 have been synthesized and studied in detail over the course of the last twelve years. We argue that, uniquely, in the cuprates an unusual superconducting state, that defies the standard BCS description, develops from an unusual metallic state, in which the rotational symmetry of the electron fluid is spontaneously broken.
The effects of a strong magnetic field on superconducting Nb and MoGe nanowires with diameter approximately 10 nm have been studied. We have found that the Langer-Ambegaokar-McCumber-Halperin (LAMH) ...theory of thermally activated phase slips is applicable in a wide range of magnetic fields and describes well the temperature dependence of the wire resistance, over 11 orders of magnitude. The field dependence of the critical temperature, T(c), extracted from the LAMH fits is in good quantitative agreement with the theory of pair-breaking perturbations that takes into account both spin and orbital contributions. The extracted spin-orbit scattering time agrees with an estimate tau(s.o.) approximately tau(variant Planck's over 2pic/Ze(2))(4), where tau is the elastic scattering time and Z is the atomic number.
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