We re-analyzed the issue whether the resonance peak observed in neutron scattering experiments on the cuprates is an exciton, a π-resonance, or a magnetic plasmon. We considered a toy model with on-cite Hubbard U and nearest-neighbor interactions in both charge and spin channels. We found that the resonance is predominantly an exciton, even if magnetic interaction is absent and d-wave pairing originates from attractive density-density interaction. Our results indicate that one cannot distinguish between spin and charge-mediated pairing interactions by just looking at the resonance peak in the dynamic spin susceptibility.
The superconductivity of cuprates, which has been a mystery ever since its discovery decades ago, is created through doping electrons or holes into a Mott insulator. There, however, exists an inherent electron-hole asymmetry in cuprates. The layered crystal structures of cuprates enable collective charge excitations fundamentally different from those of three-dimensional metals, i.e., acoustic plasmons. Acoustic plasmons have been recently observed in electron-doped cuprates by resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS); in contrast, there is no evidence for acoustic plasmons in hole-doped cup…
The consequences of the non-Drude charge response in the normal state of cuprates and the effect of the layered structure on electron-energy loss spectra are investigated, both for experiments in the transmission and the reflection mode. It is shown that in the intermediate doping regime the plasmon resonance has to be nearly critically damped as a result of the anomalous frequency dependence of the relaxation rate. This also implies an unusual low-energy dependence of the loss function. Both facts are consistent with experiments in cuprates. Our study based on the t-J model shows good agreeme…
Motivated by the recent resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) experiment for the electron-doped cuprates Nd_{2-x}Ce_{x}CuO_{4} with x around 0.15, we compute the density-density correlation function in the t-J model on a square lattice by including interlayer hopping and the long-range Coulomb interaction. We find that collective charge excitations are realized not inside the particle-hole continuum, but above the continuum as plasmons. The plasmon mode has a rather flat dispersion near the in-plane momentum q=(0,0) with a typical excitation energy of the order of the intralayer hopping t…
Electron quasiparticles play a crucial role in simplifying the description of many-body physics in solids with surprising success. Conventional Landau's Fermi-liquid and quasiparticle theories for high-temperature superconducting cuprates have, however, received skepticism from various angles. A path-breaking framework of electron fractionalization has been established to replace the Fermi-liquid theory for systems that show the fractional quantum Hall effect and the Mott insulating phenomena; whether it captures the essential physics of the pseudogap and superconducting phases of cuprates is …
We discuss the characteristic effects of the electron plasmon interaction resulting from the ~ 1 eV plasmon, which is a universal feature in the cuprates. Using the framework of a one-band tight binding model, we identify signatures of this low energy plasmon in the electronic structure of metallic overdoped Bi2212 as well as half-filled insulating SCOC. The electron-plasmon interaction is found to yield renormalizations near the Fermi energy in reasonable accord with experimental observations, and to produce dispersion anomalies at higher energies.
Strongly correlated model of acousticlike plasmons persisting across the phase diagram of cuprate superconductors
Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Ingeniería y Agrimensura (UNR-CONICET)（罗萨里奥大学理、工和测量学院（罗萨里奥大学-阿根廷国家科学技术研究委员会））；Research Center of Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS)（物质纳米结构研究中心（MANA），日本国立材料研究所（NIMS））；Max-Planck-Institute for Solid State Research（马克斯·普朗克固体研究所）；Instituto de Física Rosario (UNR-CONICET)（罗萨里奥物理研究所（罗萨里奥大学-阿根廷国家科学技术研究委员会））
Recently resonant inelastic x-ray scattering experiments reported fine details of the charge excitations around the in-plane momentum ${\bf q}_{\parallel}=(0,0)$ for various doping rates in electron-doped cuprates ${\rm La_{2-x}Ce_xCuO_4}$. We find that those new experimental data are well captured by acoustic-like plasmon excitations in a microscopic study of the layered $t$-$J$ model with the long-range Coulomb interaction. The acoustic-like plasmon is not a usual plasmon typical to the two-dimensional system, but has a small gap proportional to the interlayer hopping $t_z$.
High Tc superconductors show a rich variety of phases associated with their charge degrees of freedom. Valence charges can give rise to charge ordering or acoustic plasmons in these layered cuprate superconductors. While charge ordering has been observed for both hole- and electron-doped cuprates, acoustic plasmons have only been found in electron-doped materials. Here, we use resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) to observe the presence of acoustic plasmons in two families of hole-doped cuprate superconductors [La2-xSrxCuO4 (LSCO) and Bi2Sr1.6La0.4CuO6+d (Bi2201)], crucially completing t…
We theoretically analyse the process of charge recombination in the planar Mott-Hubbard insulators with the aim to explain short picosecond-range lifetime of photoexcited carriers, experimentally studied via pump-probe experiments on the undoped cuprates. The recombination mechanism consists of two essential ingredients: the formation of a metastable s-type bound holon-doublon pair, i.e. the Mott exciton, and the decay of such an excitonic state via the multimagnon emission. In spite of the large gap that requires many bosons to be emitted, latter process is fast due to large exchange scale an…
Explaining the mechanism of superconductivity in the high-$T_c$ cuprates requires an understanding of what causes electrons to form Cooper pairs. Pairing can be mediated by phonons, the screened Coulomb force, spin or charge fluctuations, excitons, or by a combination of these. An excitonic pairing mechanism has been postulated, but experimental evidence for coupling between conduction electrons and excitons in the cuprates is sporadic. Here we use resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) to monitor the temperature dependence of the $\underline{d}d$ exciton spectrum of Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$…
We present an $\textit{ab initio}$ study of the excitonic states of a prototypical high-temperature superconductor La$_2$CuO$_4$ and compare them to the isostructural single-layer nickelate La$_2$NiO$_4$. Key difference in the low-energy electronic structure leads to very different excitonic behavior. Excitons in La$_2$CuO$_4$ are delocalized and can freely move in the CuO$_2$ plane without disturbing the antiferromagnetic order. In contrast, in La$_2$NiO$_4$ we find the low-lying excitonic states to be extremely localized, producing a nearly flat dispersion. The theoretically obtained exciton…
The interplay between charge order and superconductivity remains one of the central themes of research in quantum materials. In the case of cuprates, the coupling between striped charge fluctuations and local electromagnetic fields is especially important, as it affects transport properties, coherence and dimensionality of superconducting correlations. Here, we study the emission of coherent terahertz radiation in single-layer cuprates of the La$_{2-x}$Ba$_x$CuO$_4$ family, for which this effect is expected to be forbidden by symmetry. We find that emission vanishes for compounds in which the …
We use resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) to probe the propagation of plasmons in the electron-doped cuprate superconductor Sr$_{0.9}$La$_{0.1}$CuO$_2$ (SLCO). We detect a plasmon gap of $\sim$~120 meV at the two-dimensional Brillouin zone center, indicating that low-energy plasmons in SLCO are not strictly acoustic. The plasmon dispersion, including the gap, is accurately captured by layered $t$-$J$-$V$ model calculations. A similar analysis performed on recent RIXS data from other cuprates suggests that the plasmon gap is generic and its size is related to the magnitude of the interl…
An introduction is given to collective modes in layered, high Tc superconductors. An experimental demonstration is treated of the mechanism proposed by Anderson whereby photons travelling inside the superconductor become massive, when the U(1) gauge symmetry is broken in the superconductor to which the photons are coupled. Using the Ferrell-Tinkham sumrule the photon mass is shown to have a simple relation to the spectral weight of the condensate. Various forms of Josephson plasmons can exist in single-layer, and bi-layecuprates. In the bi-layer cuprates a transverse optical plasma mode can be…
The discovery of superconductivity in infinite-layer nickelates is presently an important topic in condensed-matter physics, and potential similarities to and differences from cuprates are under intense debate. We determine general features of the charge excitation spectrum in nickelates from two opposite viewpoints: (i) Nickelates are regarded as strongly correlated electron systems like cuprate superconductors and thus can be described by the $t$-$J$ model, and (ii) electron correlation effects are not as strong as in cuprates, and thus, random-phase approximation (RPA) calculations may capt…
The single-site dynamical mean-field approximation is used to solve a model of high-Tc cuprate superconductors which includes both d_{x^2-y^2} and d_{3z^2-r^2} orbitals on the Cu as well as the relevant oxygen states. Both T (with apical oxygen) and T' (without apical oxygen) crystal structures are considered. In both phases, inclusion of the d_{3z^2-r^2} orbital is found to broaden the range of stability of the charge transfer insulating phase. For equal charge transfer energies and interaction strengths, the T' phase is found to be less strongly correlated than the T phase. For both structur…
We propose that an extension of the exciton concept to doped Mott insulators offers a fruitful insight into challenging issues of the copper oxide superconductors. In our extension, new fermionic excitations called cofermions emerge in conjunction to generalized excitons. The cofermions hybridize with conventional quasiparticles. Then a hybridization gap opens, and is identified as the pseudogap observed in the underdoped cuprates. The resultant Fermi-surface reconstruction naturally explains a number of unusual properties of the underdoped cuprates, such as the Fermi arc and/or pocket formati…
Observation of correlated plasmons in low-valence nickelates
Brookhaven National Laboratory（布鲁克海文国家实验室）；Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院物理研究所凝聚态物理北京国家实验室）；Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory（斯坦福材料能源科学研究所，SLAC国家加速器实验室）；National Synchrotron Light Source II, Brookhaven National Laboratory（布鲁克海文国家实验室第二代同步辐射光源）；Shanghai Advanced Research in Physical Sciences (SHARPS)（上海物理科学研究前沿中心）
Strongly-coupled hybrid lattice-plasmons in layered cuprates
University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory（劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室）；Diamond Light Source（钻石光源）；Seoul National University（首尔国立大学）；National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory and School of Nuclear Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学核科学与技术学院及国家同步辐射实验室）；Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory（斯坦福材料能源科学研究所，SLAC国家加速器实验室）；Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials, Stanford University（斯坦福大学先进材料盖巴尔实验室）
The recent development of x-ray scattering techniques revealed the charge-excitation spectrum in high-$T_c$ cuprate superconductors. While the presence of a dispersive signal in the high-energy charge-excitation spectrum is well accepted in the electron-doped cuprates, its interpretation and universality are controversial. Since charge fluctuations are observed ubiquitously in cuprate superconductors, the understanding of its origin is a pivotal issue. Here, we employ the layered $t$-$J$ model with the long-range Coulomb interaction and show that an acoustic-like plasmon mode with a gap at in-…
Theory of doped Mott insulators is revisited in the light of recent understanding on the singular self-energy structure of the single-particle Green's function. The unique pole structure in the self-energy induces the high-temperature superconductivity in the anomalous part, while it generates Mott gap and pseudogap in the normal part. Here, we elucidate that fractionalization of electrons, which is exactly hold in the Mott insulator in the atomic limit, more generally produces the emergent Mott-gap fermion and dark (hidden) fermions. It does not require any spontaneous symmetry breaking. The …
