Abstract
In underdoped cuprate superconductors, phase stiffness is low and long-range superconducting order is destroyed readily by thermally generated vortices (and anti-vortices), giving rise to a broad temperature regime above the zero-resistive state in which the superconducting phase is incoherent1,2,3,4. It has often been suggested that these vortex-like excitations are related to the normal-state pseudogap or some interaction between the pseudogap state and the superconducting state5,6,7,8,9,10. However, to elucidate the precise relationship between the pseudogap and superconductivity, it is important to establish whether this broad phase-fluctuation regime vanishes, along with the pseudogap11, in the slightly overdoped region of the phase diagram where the superfluid pair density and correlation energy are both maximal12. Here we show, by tracking the restoration of the normal-state magnetoresistance in overdoped La2−xSrxCuO4, that the phase-fluctuation regime remains broad across the entire superconducting composition range. The universal low phase stiffness is shown to be correlated with a low superfluid density1, a characteristic of both underdoped and overdoped cuprates12,13,14. The formation of the pseudogap, by inference, is therefore both independent of and distinct from superconductivity.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge R. A. Cooper for experimental assistance, S. M. Hayden and O. J. Lipscombe for providing us with the LSCO23 crystals, and J. P. Annett, A. Carrington, B. Gyorffy, R. H. McKenzie, T. Senthil, N. Shannon, T. Timusk, Y. J. Uemura and J. A. Wilson for fruitful discussions. This work was supported by EPSRC (UK), MEXT-CT-2006-039047, EURYI, the National Research Foundation, Singapore and EuroMagNET under EU contract 228043. N.E.H. acknowledges a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.
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All authors made critical comments on the manuscript. Y.T., T.A. and Y.K. synthesized the samples. P.M.C.R., I.M., X.X., Y.W., B.V., C.P., E.V.K., U.Z. and N.E.H. carried out the transport measurements. P.M.C.R., I.M. and N.E.H. analysed and interpreted the transport data.
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Rourke, P., Mouzopoulou, I., Xu, X. et al. Phase-fluctuating superconductivity in overdoped La2−xSrxCuO4. Nature Phys 7, 455–458 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1945
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1945
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