On the resistivity at low temperatures in electron-doped cuprate superconductors

Abstract

We measured the magnetoresistance as a function of temperature down to 20mK and magnetic field for a set of underdoped PrCeCuO (x=0.12) thin films with controlled oxygen content. This allows us to access the edge of the superconducting dome on the underdoped side. The sheet resistance increases with increasing oxygen content whereas the superconducting transition temperature is steadily decreasing down to zero. Upon applying various magnetic fields to suppress superconductivity we found that the sheet resistance increases when the temperature is lowered. It saturates at very low temperatures. These results, along with the magnetoresistance, cannot be described in the context of zero temperature two dimensional superconductor-to-insulator transition nor as a simple Kondo effect due to scattering off spins in the copper-oxide planes. We conjecture that due to the proximity to an antiferromagnetic phase magnetic droplets are induced. This results in negative magnetoresistance and in an upturn in the resistivity.

Accepted in Phys. Rev. B

References in corpus (7)

• Superconductivity phase diagrams of electron doped cuprates R(2-x)CexCuO4 (R = La, Pr, Nd, Sm, and Eu)
• Disorder, Metal-Insulator crossover and Phase diagram in high-Tc cuprates
• Role of oxygen in the electron-doped superconducting cuprates
• Effect of Nonmagnetic Impurity in Nearly Antiferromagnetic Fermi Liquid: Magnetic Correlations and Transport Phenomena
• Theory of Resistivity Upturns in Metallic Cuprates
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• c-Axis longitudinal magnetoresistance of the electron-doped superconductor Pr1.85Ce0.15CuO4

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Two-dimensional superconductor-insulator quantum phase transitions in an electron-doped cuprate
• Hidden Fermi-liquid charge transport in the antiferromagnetic phase of the electron-doped cuprates
• Transport anomalies and quantum criticality in electron-doped cuprate superconductors
• High magnetic field evolution of the in-plane angular magnetoresistance of electron-doped Sr1-xLaxCuO2 in the normal state
• Tunable superconductivity in parent cuprate Pr${}_2$CuO${}_{4\pm \delta }$ thin films