Gapped collective charge excitations and interlayer hopping in cuprate superconductors

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.047001

Authors: M. Hepting (Max-Planck-Institute for Solid State Research) , M. Bejas (Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Ingeniería y Agrimensura and Instituto de Física de Rosario (UNR-CONICET)) , A. Nag (Diamond Light Source) , H. Yamase (National Institute for Materials Science (Japan); Hokkaido University) , N. Coppola (Università di Salerno) , D. Betto (Max-Planck-Institute for Solid State Research) , C. Falter (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität) , Mirian Garcia-Fernandez (Diamond Light Source) , S. Agrestini (Diamond Light Source) , K.-J. Zhou (Diamond Light Source) , M. Minola (Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research) , C. Sacco (Università di Salerno) , L. Maritato (Università di Salerno; CNR-SPIN Salerno) , P. Orgiani (CNR-SPIN Salerno, Università di Salerno; CNR-IOM) , H. I. Wei (Cornell University) , K. M. Shen (Cornell University) , D. G. Schlom (Cornell University; Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science; Leibniz-Institut für Kristallzüchtung) , A. Galdi (Università di Salerno; Cornell University) , A. Greco (Ingeniería y Agrimensura and Instituto de Física de Rosario (UNR-CONICET)) , B. Keimer (Max-Planck-Institute for Solid State Research)
Co-authored by industrial partner: No

Type: Journal Paper
Journal: Physical Review Letters , VOL 129

State: Published (Approved)
Published: July 2022
Diamond Proposal Number(s): 23933

Abstract: We use resonant inelastic x-ray scattering to probe the propagation of plasmons in the electron-doped cuprate superconductor Sr 0.9 La 0.1 CuO 2 . We detect a plasmon gap of ∼ 120     meV at the two-dimensional Brillouin zone center, indicating that low-energy plasmons in Sr 0.9 La 0.1 CuO 2 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 resonant inelastic x-ray scattering data from other cuprates suggests that the plasmon gap is generic and its size is related to the magnitude of the interlayer hopping t z . Our work signifies the three dimensionality of the charge dynamics in layered cuprates and provides a new method to determine t z .

Journal Keywords: Superconducting phase transition; Cuprates; High-temperature superconductors; Methods in superconductivity; Resonant inelastic x-ray scattering; t-J model

Subject Areas: Materials, Physics


Instruments: I21-Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS)

Added On: 20/07/2022 09:40

Documents:
PhysRevLett.129.047001.pdf

Discipline Tags:

Superconductors Quantum Materials Physics Materials Science

Technical Tags:

Scattering Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS)