Wiedemann-Franz law and abrupt change in conductivity across the pseudogap critical point of a cuprate superconductor

Abstract

The thermal conductivity $\kappa$ of the cuprate superconductor La${}_{1.6-x}$Nd${}_{0.4}$Sr${}_x$CuO${}_4$ was measured down to 50 mK in seven crystals with doping from $p=0.12$ to $p=0.24$, both in the superconducting state and in the magnetic field-induced normal state. We obtain the electronic residual linear term ${\kappa }_0/T$ as $T\to 0$ across the pseudogap critical point $p^{\star }=0.23$. In the normal state, we observe an abrupt drop in ${\kappa }_0/T$ upon crossing below $p^{\star }$, consistent with a drop in carrier density $n$ from $1+p$ to $p$, the signature of the pseudogap phase inferred from the Hall coefficient. A similar drop in ${\kappa }_0/T$ is observed at $H=0$, showing that the pseudogap critical point and its signatures are unaffected by the magnetic field. In the normal state, the Wiedemann-Franz law, ${\kappa }_0/T=L_0/\rho (0)$, is obeyed at all dopings, including at the critical point where the electrical resistivity $\rho (T)$ is $T$-linear down to $T\to 0$. We conclude that the non-superconducting ground state of the pseudogap phase at $T=0$ is a metal whose fermionic excitations carry heat and charge as conventional electrons do.

arXiv comment10 pages, including Supplementary Material

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Cited by in corpus (18)

• Planckian Dissipation in Metals
• Boson-Exchange Parquet Solver for dual fermions
• Normal state specific heat in the cuprates La${}_{2-x}$Sr${}_x$CuO${}_4$ and Bi${}_{2+y}$Sr${}_{2-x-y}$La${}_x$CuO${}_{6+\delta }$ near the critical point of the pseudogap phase
• Seebeck coefficient in a cuprate superconductor: particle-hole asymmetry in the strange metal phase and Fermi surface transformation in the pseudogap phase
• Thermopower across the phase diagram of the cuprate La${}_{1.6-x}$Nd${}_{0.4}$Sr${}_x$CuO${}_4$ : signatures of the pseudogap and charge-density-wave phases
• Transport signatures of the pseudogap critical point in the cuprate superconductor Bi${}_2$Sr${}_{2-x}$La${}_x$CuO${}_{6+\delta }$
• Fabrication and electrical transport characterization of high quality underdoped YBa${}_2$Cu${}_3$O${}_{7-\delta }$ nanowires
• Materials preparation, single crystal growth, and the phase diagram of the cuprate high temperature superconductor La1.6-xNd0.4SrxCuO4
• The Wiedemann-Franz law in doped Mott insulators without quasiparticles
• The spectral weight of hole doped cuprates across the pseudogap critical point
• High density of states in the pseudogap phase of the cuprate superconductor HgBa${}_2$CuO${}_{4+\delta }$
• Heat hunting in freezer: Direct measurement of quasiparticle diffusion in superconducting nanowire
• Die Hard Holographic Phenomenology of Cuprates
• Incoherent transport in a model for the strange metal phase: Memory-matrix formalism
• Fermi surface enlargement on the Kondo lattice
• Effect of pressure on the pseudogap and charge-density-wave phases of the cuprate La${}_{1.6-x}$Nd${}_{0.4}$Sr${}_x$CuO${}_4$ probed by thermopower measurements
• The Future of the Correlated Electron Problem
• Pseudogap and strange metal states in the square-lattice Hubbard model: A comprehensive study