A gauge approach to the "pseudogap" phenomenology of the spectral weight in high Tc cuprates

Abstract

We assume the t-t'-J model to describe the CuO_2 planes of hole-doped cuprates and we adapt the spin-charge gauge approach, previously developed for the t-J model, to describe the holes in terms of a spinless fermion carrying the charge (holon) and a neutral boson carrying spin 1/2 (spinon), coupled by a slave-particle gauge field. In this framework we consider the effects of a finite density of incoherent holon pairs in the normal state. Below a crossover temperature, identified as the experimental "upper pseudogap", the scattering of the "quanta" of the phase of the holon-pair field against holons reproduces the phenomenology of Fermi arcs coexisting with gap in the antinodal region. We thus obtain a microscopic derivation of the main features of the hole spectra due to pseudogap. This result is obtained through a holon Green function which follows naturally from the formalism and analytically interpolates between a Fermi liquid-like and a d-wave superconductor behavior as the coherence length of the holon pair order parameter increases. By inserting the gauge coupling with the spinon we construct explicitly the hole Green function and calculate its spectral weight and the corresponding density of states. So we prove that the formation of holon pairs induces a depletion of states on the hole Fermi surface. We compare our results with ARPES and tunneling experimental data. In our approach the hole preserves a finite Fermi surface until the superconducting transition, where it reduces to four nodes. Therefore we propose that the gap seen in the normal phase of cuprates is due to the thermal broadening of the SC-like peaks masking the Fermi-liquid peak. The Fermi arcs then correspond to the region of the Fermi surface where the Fermi-liquid peak is unmasked.

10 figures, comments and references added, 2 figures changed

References in corpus (10)

• Scanning tunneling spectroscopy of high-temperature superconductors
• A Phenomenological Theory of The Pseudogap State
• Evolution of electronic structure of doped Mott insulators - reconstruction of poles and zeros of Green's function
• Modeling the Fermi arc in underdoped cuprates
• Doped high-Tc cuprate superconductors elucidated in the light of zeros and poles of electronic Green's function
• Doping-dependent evolution of low-energy excitations and quantum phase transitions within effective model for High-Tc copper oxides
• Pseudogap in underdoped cuprates and spin-density-wave fluctuations
• Paired electron pockets in the hole-doped cuprates
• Spin-charge gauge approach to metal-insulator crossover and transport properties in High-T${}_c$ cuprates
• Gauge approach to the specific heat in the normal state of cuprates

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• Gauge approach to superfluid density in underdoped cuprates
• Interplay of superconductivity and magnetism in a t-t'-J approach to high Tc cuprates
• Fractional statistics of charge carriers in the one- and two-dimensional t-J model. A hint for the cuprates?
• Superfluid density in cuprates: hints on gauge compositeness of the holes