Competing ferromagnetism in high temperature copper oxide superconductors

Abstract

The extreme variability of observables across the phase diagram of the cuprate high temperature superconductors has remained a profound mystery, with no convincing explanation of the superconducting dome. While much attention has been paid to the underdoped regime of the hole-doped cuprates because of its proximity to a complex Mott insulating phase, little attention has been paid to the overdoped regime. Experiments are beginning to reveal that the phenomenology of the overdoped regime is just as puzzling. For example, the electrons appear to form a Landau Fermi liquid, but this interpretation is problematic; any trace of Mott phenomena, as signified by incommensurate antiferromagnetic fluctuations, is absent, and the uniform spin susceptibility shows a ferromagnetic upturn. Here we show and justify that many of these puzzles can be resolved if we assume that competing ferromagnetic fluctuations are simultaneously present with superconductivity, and the termination of the superconducting dome in the overdoped regime marks a quantum critical point beyond which there should be a genuine ferromagnetic phase at zero temperature. We propose new experiments, and make new predictions, to test our theory and suggest that effort must be mounted to elucidate the nature of the overdoped regime, if the problem of high temperature superconductivity is to be solved. Our approach places competing order as the root of the complexity of the cuprate phase diagram.

The expanded published version with very minor differences

References in corpus (6)

• The ground state of heavily-overdoped non-superconducting La${}_{2-x}$Sr${}_x$CuO${}_4$
• Criticality in correlated quantum matter
• Inhomogeneity Induces Resonance Coherence Peaks in Superconducting BSCCO
• Effective theory of high-temperature superconductors
• 4D-XY quantum criticality in a doped Mott insulator
• Modulation of the local density of states within the $d$-density wave theory in the underdoped cuprates

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Tl2Ba2CuO6+d Brings Spectroscopic Probes Deep Into the Overdoped Regime of the High-Tc Cuprates
• Competing order, Fermi surface reconstruction, and quantum oscillations in underdoped high temperature superconductors
• Field-induced quantum critical route to a Fermi liquid in high-temperature superconductors
• Key issues in theories of high temperature superconductors
• Magnetic mechanism of quasiparticle pairing in hole-doped cuprate superconductors