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Electron-spin excitation coupling in an electron-doped copper oxide superconductor

Nature Physics volume 7, pages 719–724 (2011)Cite this article

Abstract

High-temperature (high- Tc) superconductivity in the copper oxides arises from electron or hole doping of their antiferromagnetic (AF) insulating parent compounds. The evolution of the AF phase with doping and its spatial coexistence with superconductivity are governed by the nature of charge and spin correlations, which provides clues to the mechanism of high- Tc superconductivity. Here we use neutron scattering and scanning tunnelling spectroscopy (STS) to study the evolution of the bosonic excitations in electron-doped superconductor Pr0.88LaCe0.12CuO4−δ with different transition temperatures (Tc) obtained through the oxygen annealing process. We find that spin excitations detected by neutron scattering have two distinct modes that evolve with Tc in a remarkably similar fashion to the low-energy electron tunnelling modes detected by STS. These results demonstrate that antiferromagnetism and superconductivity compete locally and coexist spatially on nanometre length scales, and the dominant electron–boson coupling at low energies originates from the electron-spin excitations.

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Figure 1: Schematic diagram of polarized neutron scattering set-up and polarized neutron scattering data at various temperatures.
Figure 2: Energy dependence of SF and NSF scattering at Q=(1.5,−0.5,0) rlu for the 24 K PLCCO and χ′′(ω) in absolute units for the 21 and 24 K samples.
Figure 3: Comparison of the tunnelling spectra of the 21 and 24 K samples.
Figure 4: Spatial variation of gap and Bosonic modes.

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Acknowledgements

The neutron scattering work at UT/ORNL is supported by the US NSF-OISE-0968226, and by the US DOE, Division of Scientific User Facilities (P.D.). Work at BC is supported by US NSF-CAREER-0645299 (V.M.) and DOE DE-SC0002554 (Z.W.). The single crystal PLCCO growth effort at UT is supported by US DOE BES under Grant No. DE-FG02-05ER46202 (P.D.). Work at IOP is supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (973 Project nos. 2010CB833102 and 2010CB923002). J.Z. is supported by a fellowship from Miller Institute of Basic Research in Science at Berkeley.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Jun Zhao

    Present address: Present address: Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-7300, USA,

  2. F. C. Niestemski

    Present address: Present address: Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA,

  3. Shankar Kunwar

    Present address: Present address: Department of Physics, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, 31261, Saudi Arabia,

  4. Jun Zhao and F. C. Niestemski: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-1200, USA

    Jun Zhao, Shiliang Li & Pengcheng Dai

  2. Department of Physics, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467, USA

    F. C. Niestemski, Shankar Kunwar, Stephen D. Wilson, Ziqiang Wang & V. Madhavan

  3. Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, China

    Shiliang Li & Pengcheng Dai

  4. Institut Laue Langevin, 6 Rue Jules Horowitz BP 156, F-38042 Grenoble Cedex 9, France

    P. Steffens & A. Hiess

  5. NIST Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899-8562, USA

    H. J. Kang

  6. Neutron Scattering Science Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA

    Pengcheng Dai

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  1. Jun Zhao
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Contributions

P.D. and V.M. planned the neutron and STM experiments, respectively. J.Z., S.L., P.S., A.H., H.J.K., S.D.W. and P.D. carried out neutron scattering measurements and data analysis. F.C.N., S.K. and V.M. performed STM/STS measurements. The samples were grown by J.Z. and S.L. The paper was written by P.D., V.M. and Z.W. with input from J.Z., S.D.W., and F.C.N. All coauthors provided comments on the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Pengcheng Dai or V. Madhavan.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Zhao, J., Niestemski, F., Kunwar, S. et al. Electron-spin excitation coupling in an electron-doped copper oxide superconductor. Nature Phys 7, 719–724 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2006

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