Abstract
A key question in condensed-matter physics is to understand how high-temperature superconductivity emerges on adding mobile charged carriers to an antiferromagnetic Mott insulator. We address this question using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy to probe the electronic excitations of the non-superconducting state that exists between the Mott insulator and the d-wave superconductor in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ. Despite a temperature-dependent resistivity characteristic of an insulator, the excitations in this intermediate state have a highly anisotropic energy gap that vanishes at four points in momentum space. This nodal-liquid state has the same gap structure as that of the d-wave superconductor but no sharp quasiparticle peaks. We observe a smooth evolution of the excitation spectrum, along with the appearance of coherent quasiparticles, as one goes through the insulator-to-superconductor transition as a function of doping. Our results suggest that high-temperature superconductivity emerges when quantum phase coherence is established in a non-superconducting nodal liquid.
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Acknowledgements
Work supported by the US National Science Foundation under grant DMR-0606255 (J.C.C.), NSF-DMR 0706203 (M.R.), and the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, under contract Nos DE-AC02-06CH11357 and DE-AC02-98CH10886. The Synchrotron Radiation Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, is supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. DMR-0537588.
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Project planning: J.C.C.; sample preparation: H.R., Z.Z.L., K.K., D.G.H., Z.J.X., J.S.W., G.G. and C.T.L.; ARPES experiments: U.C., M.S., D.A., J.Z., A.K. and S.R.; resistivity measurements: H.R. and Z.Z.L.; susceptibility measurements: H.C.; data analysis: U.C., M.S., D.A., A.K., M.R.N. and J.C.C.; manuscript preparation: U.C., M.R.N., M.R. and J.C.C.
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Chatterjee, U., Shi, M., Ai, D. et al. Observation of a d-wave nodal liquid in highly underdoped Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ. Nature Phys 6, 99–103 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1456
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1456
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