Origin of the Pseudogap in High-Temperature Cuprate Superconductors

Abstract

Cuprate high-temperature superconductors exhibit a pseudogap in the normal state that decreases monotonically with increasing hole doping and closes at x \approx 0.19 holes per planar CuO2 while the superconducting doping range is 0.05 < x < 0.27 with optimal Tc at x \approx 0.16. Using ab initio quantum calculations at the level that leads to accurate band gaps, we found that four-Cu-site plaquettes are created in the vicinity of dopants. At x \approx 0.05 the plaquettes percolate, so that the Cu dx2y2/O pσ orbitals inside the plaquettes now form a band of states along the percolating swath. This leads to metallic conductivity and below Tc to superconductivity. Plaquettes disconnected from the percolating swath are found to have degenerate states at the Fermi level that split and lead to the pseudogap. The pseudogap can be calculated by simply counting the spatial distribution of isolated plaquettes, leading to an excellent fit to experiment. This provides strong evidence in favor of inhomogeneous plaquettes in cuprates.

24 pages (4 pages main text plus 20 pages supplement)

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Non-Hermitian Pseudo-Gaps
• Two Ising-like magnetic excitations in a single-layer cuprate superconductor
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• Real Non-Hermitian Energy Spectra Without Any Symmetry
• Electronic structure of the ingredient planes of cuprate superconductor Bi2Sr2CuO6+δ: a comparison study with Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ
• Mechanism of metallization and superconductivity suppression in YBa${}_2($Cu${}_{0.97}$Zn${}_{0.03}{)}_3$O${}_{6.92}$ revealed by ${}^{67}$Zn NQR
• Anisotropic evolution of energy gap in Bi2212 superconductor
• Fermi arcs and pseudogap emerging from dimensional crossover at the Fermi surface in La${}_{2-x}$Sr${}_x$CuO${}_4$
• Resistance of High-Temperature Cuprate Superconductors
• Fundamental building blocks of strongly correlated wave functions