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Spin fluctuations in YBa2Cu3O6.6

Nature volume 395, pages 580–582 (1998)Cite this article

Abstract

An important feature of the high-transition-temperature (high-Tc) copper oxide superconductors is the magnetism that results from the spins associated with the incomplete outer electronic shells (3d9) of the copper ions. Fluctuations of these spins give rise to magnetic excitations of the material, and might mediate the electron pairing that leads to superconductivity. If the mechanism for high-Tc superconductivity is the same for all copper oxide systems, their spin fluctuations should be universal. But so far, theopposite has seemed to be the case: neutron scattering data reveal clear differences between the spin fluctuations for two major classes of high-Tc materials, La2−xSrxCuO4 (1-3) and YBa2Cu3O7−x (4-6), whose respective building blocks are CuO2 layers and bilayers. Here we report two-dimensional neutron-scattering imaging of YBa2Cu3O6.6, which reveals that the low-frequency magnetic excitations are virtually identical to those of similarly doped La2−xSrxCuO4. Thus, the high-temperature (Tc ≲ 92 K) superconductivity of the former materials may be related to spatially coherent low-frequency spin excitations that were previously thought to be unique to the lower-Tc (<40 K) single-layer La2−xSrxCuO4 family.

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Figure 1: Reciprocal lattice diagram and neutron-scattering results.
Figure 2: Data obtained from cuts through the two-dimensional images in Fig. 1.

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Acknowledgements

We thank R. Coldea, D. A. Tennant, C. Frost and T. B. Lindemer for technical assistance. Support at Oak Ridge was received from the US DOE.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, 37831-6393, Tennessee, USA

    H. A. Mook & Pengcheng Dai

  2. H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TL, UK

    S. M. Hayden

  3. NEC Research Institute, 4 Independence Way, Princeton, 08540, New Jersey, USA

    G. Aeppli

  4. ISIS Facility, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, OX11 0QX, UK

    T. G. Perring

  5. Department of Materials Sciences and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, 98195, Washington, USA

    F. Doğan

Authors
  1. H. A. Mook
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  2. Pengcheng Dai
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  4. G. Aeppli
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Correspondence to H. A. Mook.

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Mook, H., Dai, P., Hayden, S. et al. Spin fluctuations in YBa2Cu3O6.6. Nature 395, 580–582 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/26931

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