Article abstract
Nature Physics 3, 184 - 191 (2007)
doi:10.1038/nphys542
Subject Categories: Condensed-matter physics | Materials physics
Fluctuating Cu–O–Cu bond model of high-temperature superconductivity
D. M. Newns1,2 and C. C. Tsuei2
Abstract
Twenty years of research have yet to produce a consensus on the origin of high-temperature superconductivity (HTS). However, several generic characteristics of the copper oxide superconductors have emerged as the essential ingredients of and/or constraints on any viable microscopic model of HTS. Besides a critical temperature Tc of the order of 100 K, they include a d-wave superconducting gap with Fermi liquid nodal excitations, a pseudogap with d-symmetry and the characteristic temperature scale T*, an anomalous doping-dependent oxygen isotope shift, nanometre-scale gap inhomogeneity and so on. The isotope shift implies a key role for oxygen vibrations, but conventional Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer single-phonon coupling is essentially forbidden by symmetry and by the on-site Coulomb interaction U. Here we invoke the nonlinear modulation of the Cu–Cu bond by planar oxygen vibrations. The Fermi liquid nature of the d-wave superconducting ground state supports a weak-coupling treatment of this modulation. The dominant fluctuations are manifested in a pattern of oxygen vibrational square amplitudes with quadrupolar symmetry around a given Cu site. On the basis of such bond fluctuations, both dynamic and static, we can understand the salient features of HTS.
- IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598, USA
- These authors contributed equally to this work
Correspondence to: e-mail: dennisn@us.ibm.com
MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS
These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.
NEWS AND VIEWS
Superconductivity Are we there yet?Nature Physics News and Views (01 Mar 2007)
Superconductivity Squash and sandwichesNature Materials News and Views (01 Dec 2008)
See all 12 matches for News And ViewsRESEARCH
Small phonon contribution to the photoemission kink in the copper oxide superconductorsNature Letters to Editor (24 Apr 2008)
Impurity effects on electron?mode coupling in high-temperature superconductorsNature Physics Letter (01 Jan 2006)
See all 60 matches for Research
