Seminar
Visualizing the Nanoscale Electronic Landscape of the Cuprates
Speaker
Eric Hudson
MIT
Date & Time
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Time: 2:00-3:00pm
Location: 1601 Elings Hall
One of the main challenges in the study of the cuprates is to disentangle the rich variety of states of matter that may coexist, cooperate, or compete with d-wave superconductivity. At center stage is the pseudogap phase, which occupies a large portion of the cuprate phase diagram surrounding the superconducting dome. In this talk I will present results of our recent temperature and doping dependent scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) investigations of Bi2Sr2CuO6+x (Bi-2201). After describing a method of distinguishing the superconducting gap from pseudogap [1], I will turn to a description of spatial 'checkerboard' patterns, which have been widely observed in the cuprates. We have found a distinct doping dependence of this checkerboard pattern indicating that a charge density wave is its cause [2]. Finally, I will present results of a new study which strongly ties the checkerboard to the pseudogap and suggests that nanoscale charge inhomogeneity is responsible for variations in both [3]. Taken together, these results suggest a need to rethink the nature of pseudogap and its relation to high temperature superconductivity.
- "Imaging the two gaps of the high-temperature superconductor Bi2Sr2CuO6+x," M. C. Boyer et al, Nat. Phys. 3, 802 (2007).
- "Charge-density-wave origin of cuprate checkerboard visualized by scanning tunnelling microscopy," W.D. Wise et al, Nat. Phys. 4, 696 (2008).
- "Imaging nanoscale Fermi surface variations in an inhomogeneous superconductor," W.D. Wise et al, Nat. Phys. 5, 213 (2009).