Evidence for a Vestigial Nematic State in the Cuprate Pseudogap Phase

Abstract

The CuO${}_2$ antiferromagnetic insulator is transformed by hole-doping into an exotic quantum fluid usually referred to as the pseudogap (PG) phase. Its defining characteristic is a strong suppression of the electronic density-of-states D(E) for energies |E|<${\Delta }^{\ast }$, where ${\Delta }^{\ast }$ is the pseudogap energy. Unanticipated broken-symmetry phases have been detected by a wide variety of techniques in the PG regime, most significantly a finite Q density-wave (DW) state and a Q=0 nematic (NE) state. Sublattice-phase-resolved imaging of electronic structure allows the doping and energy dependence of these distinct broken symmetry states to be visualized simultaneously. Using this approach, we show that, even though their reported ordering temperatures T${}_{DW}$ and T${}_{NE}$ are unrelated to each other, both the DW and NE states always exhibit their maximum spectral intensity at the same energy, and using independent measurements that this is the pseudogap energy ${\Delta }^{\ast }$. Moreover, no new energy-gap opening coincides with the appearance of the DW state (which should theoretically open an energy gap on the Fermi-surface), while the observed pseudogap opening coincides with the appearance of the NE state (which should theoretically be incapable of opening a Fermi-surface gap). We demonstrate how this perplexing phenomenology of thermal transitions and energy-gap opening at the breaking of two highly distinct symmetries can be understood as the natural consequence of a vestigial nematic state , within the pseudogap phase of Bi${}_2$Sr${}_2$CaCu${}_2$O${}_8$.

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• Ubiquitous Charge Order Correlations in High-Temperature Superconducting Cuprates
• Topological Nature of High Temperature Superconductivity
• Cascade of vestigial orders in two-component superconductors: nematic, ferromagnetic, s-wave charge-4e, and d-wave charge-4e states
• Criticality Across the Energy Spectrum from Random, Artificial Gravitational Lensing in Two-Dimensional Dirac Superconductors
• Temperature independent cuprate pseudogap from planar oxygen NMR
• Charge, bond, and pair density wave orders in a strongly correlated system
• Classification of electronic nematicity in three-dimensional crystals and quasicrystals
• Discovery of Orbital Ordering in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x
• Geodesic geometry of 2+1-D Dirac materials subject to artificial, quenched gravitational singularities
• Colossal transverse magnetoresistance due to nematic superconducting phase fluctuations in a copper oxide
• Low-temperature T-linear resistivity in the strange metal phase of overdoped cuprate superconductors due to umklapp scattering from a spin excitation
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• Proximity-induced charge density wave in a metallic system
• Atomic-Scale Visualization of the Cuprate Pair Density Wave State
• Superconductivity near an Ising nematic quantum critical point in two dimensions
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• Electromagnetic response of cuprate superconductors with coexisting electronic nematicity
• Large Kohn anomaly and phonon collapse induced by charge density wave in UPt${}_2$Si${}_2$