Phase separation in the vicinity of "quantum critical" doping concentration: implications for high temperature superconductors

Abstract

A general quantitative measure of the tendency towards phase separation is introduced for systems exhibiting phase transitions or crossovers controlled by charge carrier concentration. This measure is devised for the situations when the quantitative knowledge of various contributions to free energy is incomplete, and is applied to evaluate the chances of electronic phase separation associated with the onset of antiferromagnetic correlations in high-temperature cuprate superconductors. The experimental phenomenology of lanthanum- and yittrium-based cuprates was used as input to this analysis. It is also pointed out that Coulomb repulsion between charge carriers separated by the distances of 1-3 lattice periods strengthens the tendency towards phase separation by accelerating the decay of antiferromagnetic correlations with doping. Overall, the present analysis indicates that cuprates are realistically close to the threshold of phase separation -- nanoscale limited or even macroscopic with charge density varying between adjacent crystal planes.

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• Superconductivity model for a spin-vortex checkerboard
• HTSC Cuprate Phase Diagram Using a Modified Boson-Fermion-Gossamer Model Describing Competing Orders, a Quantum Critical Point and Possible Resonance Complex
• Umklapp-driven first-order transition into a charge-density wave phase
• Mean-field analysis of a Hubbard interaction on Bernal Bilayer Graphene
• Classical periodic trajectories and quantum scars in many-spin systems
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