Amperean pairing and the pseudogap phase of cuprate superconductors
By Patrick Lee. 2014
258 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The enigmatic pseudogap phase in underdoped cuprate high T_c superconductors has long been recognized as a central puzzle of the T_c problem. Recent data show that the pseudogap is likely a distinct phase, characterized by a medium range and quasi-static charge ordering. However, the origin of the ordering wavevector and the mechanism of the charge order is unknown. At the same time, earlier data show that precursive superconducting fluctuations are also associated with this phase. We propose that the pseudogap phase is a novel pairing state where electrons on the same side of the Fermi surface are paired, in strong contrast with conventional BCS theory which pair electrons on opposite sides of the Fermi surface. In this state the Cooper pair carries a net momentum and belong to a general class called pair density wave (PDW). The microscopic pairing mechanism comes from a gauge theory formulation of the resonating valence bond (RVB) picture, where electrons traveling in the same direction feel an attractive force in analogy with Ampere's effects in electromagnetism. We call this Amperean pairing. Charge order automatically appears as a subsidiary order parameter. Our theory gives a prediction of the ordering wavevector which is in good agreement with experiment. Furthermore, the quasiparticle spectrum from our model explains many of the unusual features reported in photoemission experiments. The Fermi arc and the unusual way the tip of the arc terminates also come out naturally. We also discuss how the onset of the Kerr effect in this state can be accommodated. Finally, we propose an experiment which can directly test the notion of Amperean pairing.
Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Condensed Matter Physics, Inorganic Chemistry
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/31ae224017d13afbd69e79eeb82eaaf54cbfb94b
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Citations in the corpus
- Colloquium : Theory of intertwined orders in high temperature superconductors (2014, background): “…states closely related to the PDW have been found in several mean-field theories of superconducting states in strongly correlated systems (Himeda et al., 2002; Lee, 2014; Loder et al., 2010; Raczkowski et al., 2007; Soto-Garrido and Fradkin, 2014; Yang et al., 2009; Zelli et al., 2011).”
- Nonlinear light–matter interaction at terahertz frequencies (2016, background): “In this picture, in‐plane Cooper pairing would already be present at equilibrium and superimposed or intertwined [111,112,113] with the stripe phase.”