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Hard antinodal gap revealed by quantum oscillations in the pseudogap regime of underdoped high-T c superconductors

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Hartstein, M 
Hsu, YT 
Porras, J 
Loew, T 

Abstract

An understanding of the missing antinodal electronic excitations in the pseudogap state is essential for uncovering the physics of the underdoped cuprate high temperature superconductors. The majority of high temperature experiments performed thus far, however, have been unable to discern whether the antinodal states are rendered unobservable due to their damping, or whether they vanish due to their gapping. Here we distinguish between these two scenarios by using quantum oscillations to examine whether the small Fermi surface pocket, found to occupy only 2% of the Brillouin zone in the underdoped cuprates, exists in isolation against a majority of completely gapped density of states spanning the antinodes, or whether it is thermodynamically coupled to a background of ungapped antinodal states. We find that quantum oscillations associated with the small Fermi surface pocket exhibit a signature sawtooth waveform characteristic of an isolated two-dimensional Fermi surface pocket. This finding reveals that the antinodal states are destroyed by a hard gap that extends over the majority of the Brillouin zone, placing strong constraints on a drastic underlying origin of quasiparticle disappearance over almost the entire Brillouin zone in the pseudogap regime.

Description

Keywords

cond-mat.supr-con, cond-mat.supr-con, cond-mat.str-el

Journal Title

Nature Physics

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1745-2473
1745-2481

Volume Title

16

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
European Research Council (337425)
The Royal Society (uf130463)
Leverhulme Trust (PLP-2015-271)
European Research Council (772891)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/M000524/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/P024947/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/S019367/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/R00661X/1)
Royal Society Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability EPSRC studentship, grant number EP/P024947/1 EPSRC Strategic Equipment Grant EP/M000524/1 European Research Council ERC Grant Agreement number 772891 Leverhulme Trust - Philip Leverhulme Prize National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant no. 2016YFA0401704) National Science Foundation Cooperative Agreement No. DMR-1644779 State of Florida U.S. Department of Energy US DOE BES ‘Science of 100 T’ program