2007/02/09 by Y. Kohsaka, C. Taylor, K. Fujita +13 · 17 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.str-el #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/science.1138584
published as Science 315, 1380 (2007) · 28 pages, 9 figures, published version is available at http://people.ccmr.cornell.edu/~jcdavis/mK_stm/publications/domains/index.htm
openalex publication_date 2007/02/09 · arxiv created 2007/03/12 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Removing electrons from the CuO2 plane of cuprates alters the electronic correlations sufficiently to produce high-temperature superconductivity. Associated with these changes are spectral-weight transfers from the high-energy states of the insulator to low energies. In theory, these should be detectable as an imbalance between the tunneling rate for electron injection and extraction-a tunneling asymmetry. We introduce atomic-resolution tunneling-asymmetry imaging, finding virtually identical phenomena in two lightly hole-doped cuprates: Ca(1.88)Na(0.12)CuO(2)Cl2 and Bi2Sr2Dy(0.2)Ca(0.8)Cu2O(8+delta). Intense spatial variations in tunneling asymmetry occur primarily at the planar oxygen sites; their spatial arrangement forms a Cu-O-Cu bond-centered electronic pattern without long-range order but with 4a(0)-wide unidirectional electronic domains dispersed throughout (a(0): the Cu-O-Cu distance). The emerging picture is then of a partial hole localization within an intrinsic electronic glass evolving, at higher hole densities, into complete delocalization and highest-temperature superconductivity.