Contrasting Pathways to Mott Gap Collapse in Electron and Hole Doped Cuprates

Recent ARPES measurements on the electron-doped cuprate Nd_{2-x}Ce_xCuO_4 can be interpreted in a mean field model of uniform doping of an antiferromagnet, with the Mott gap closing near optimal doping. Mode coupling calculations confirm the mean field results, while clarifying the relation between the Mott gap and short-range magnetic order. The same calculations find that hole doped cuprates should follow a strikingly different doping dependence, involving instability toward spiral phases or stripes. Nevertheless, the magnetic order (now associated with stripes) again collapses near optimal doping.Comment: 5 eps figures, revtex. Presented at the ``Workshop on Intrinsic Multiscale Structure and Dynamics in Complex Electronic Oxides'', at the International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy, July 1-4, 2002; to be published, in ``Intrinsic Multiscale Structure and Dynamics in Complex Electronic Oxides'', edited by A.R. Bishop, S.R. Shenoy, and S. Sridhar, World Scientific (2003

Chaos in a Jahn-Teller Molecule

The Jahn-Teller system E x b_1 + b_2 has a particular degeneracy, where the vibronic potential has an elliptical minimum. In the general case where the ellipse does not reduce to a circle, the classical motion in the potential is chaotic, tending to trapping near one of the extrema of the ellipse. In the quantum problem, the motion consists of correlated tunneling from one extremum to the opposite, leading to an average angular momentum reminiscent of that of the better known E x e dynamic Jahn-Teller system.Comment: 7 eps figures, revtex. To be published, Phys. Rev.

Nonmonotonic dx2−y2d_{x^2-y^2} superconducting gap in electron-doped Pr0.89_{0.89}LaCe0.11_{0.11}CuO4_4: Evidence of coexisting antiferromagnetism and superconductivity?

Recent experiments on Pr$_{0.89}$LaCe$_{0.11}$CuO$_4$ observe an anisotropic spin-correlation gap and a nonmonotonic superconducting (SC) gap, which we analyze within the framework of a $t-t^{\prime}-t^{\prime\prime}-t^{\prime\prime\prime}-t^{iv}-U$ model with a $d_{x^2-y^2}$ pairing interaction including a third harmonic contribution. By introducing a realistic broadening of the quasiparticle spectrum to reflect small-angle scattering, our computations explain the experimental observations, especially the presence of a maximum in the leading edge gap in the vicinity of the hot-spots. Our analysis suggests that the material behaves like a {\it two-band} superconductor with the d-wave third harmonic acting as the {\it interband pairing gap}, and that the anti-ferromagnetic (AFM) and SC orders co-exist in a uniform phase

Reconstructing the bulk Fermi surface and the superconducting gap properties from Neutron Scattering experiments

We develop an analytical tool to extract bulk electronic properties of unconventional superconductors through inelastic neutron scattering (INS) spectra. Since the spin excitation spectrum in the superconducting (SC) state originates from Bogoliubov quasiparticle scattering associated with Fermi surface nesting, its energy-momentum relation--the so called `hour-glass' feature--can be inverted to reveal the Fermi momentum dispersion of the single-particle spectrum as well as the corresponding SC gap function. The inversion procedure is analogous to the quasiparticle interference (QPI) effect in scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). Whereas angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and STM provide surface sensitive information, our inversion procedure provides bulk electronic properties. The technique is essentially model independent and can be applied to a wide variety of materials.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure