Abstract
La1.85Ba0.15CuO4 is the prototype member of a new class of unusual high temperature (Tc>24K) superconductors. These novel materials whose properties lie at the interface between metallic and insulating behaviour show a wide variety of physical phenomena. For example, the electrical resistivity of the parent compound La2CuO4 shows metallic behaviour down to approxi-mately 25 K where an abrupt upturn occurs towards a semiconduct-ing or insulating state. The barium-doped superconductor exhibits a linear fall in resistivity from room to liquid-nitrogen tem-peratures followed by a plateau to 35 K, at which point supercon-ducting behaviour begins. Several theoretical suggestions regard-ing the origin of this behaviour have been put forward, but the role played by dynamic or static lattice–instabilities is still an area of controversy (see refs 1–4). Evidence for the presence of a tetragonal to orthorhombic phase transition together with further subtle and anomalous structural instabilities in the barium-doped compound has been reported5. To elucidate the correlations between the lattice vibrational and electronic behaviour, we have undertaken neutron inelastic scattering experiments on the High Energy Transfer spectrometer at the ISIS facility of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, using carefully prepared polycrystalline samples of both La1.85Ba0.15CuO4 and La2CuO4. The experiments were performed over a range of temperatures between 12 K and 200 K. Here we report anomalous temperature dependence of modes centred at 10 meV and 20 meV respectively.
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References
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Balakrishnan, G., Bernhoeft, N., Bowden, Z. et al. Vibrational anomalies in the superconducting compound La1.85Ba0.15CuO4. Nature 327, 45–47 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1038/327045a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/327045a0
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