15 research outputs found
What limits supercurrents in high temperature superconductors? A microscopic model of cuprate grain boundaries
The interface properties of high-temperature cuprate superconductors have
been of interest for many years, and play an essential role in Josephson
junctions, superconducting cables, and microwave electronics. In particular,
the maximum critical current achievable in high-Tc wires and tapes is well
known to be limited by the presence of grain boundaries, regions of mismatch
between crystallites with misoriented crystalline axes. In studies of single,
artificially fabricated grain boundaries the striking observation has been made
that the critical current Jc of a grain boundary junction depends exponentially
on the misorientation angle. Until now microscopic understanding of this
apparently universal behavior has been lacking. We present here the results of
a microscopic evaluation based on a construction of fully 3D YBCO grain
boundaries by molecular dynamics. With these structures, we calculate an
effective tight-binding Hamiltonian for the d-wave superconductor with a grain
boundary. The critical current is then shown to follow an exponential
suppression with grain boundary angle. We identify the buildup of charge
inhomogeneities as the dominant mechanism for the suppression of the
supercurrent.Comment: 28 pages, 12 figure
Strength of the Spin-Fluctuation-Mediated Pairing Interaction in a High-Temperature Superconductor
Theories based on the coupling between spin fluctuations and fermionic
quasiparticles are among the leading contenders to explain the origin of
high-temperature superconductivity, but estimates of the strength of this
interaction differ widely. Here we analyze the charge- and spin-excitation
spectra determined by angle-resolved photoemission and inelastic neutron
scattering, respectively, on the same crystals of the high-temperature
superconductor YBa2Cu3O6.6. We show that a self-consistent description of both
spectra can be obtained by adjusting a single parameter, the spin-fermion
coupling constant. In particular, we find a quantitative link between two
spectral features that have been established as universal for the cuprates,
namely high-energy spin excitations and "kinks" in the fermionic band
dispersions along the nodal direction. The superconducting transition
temperature computed with this coupling constant exceeds 150 K, demonstrating
that spin fluctuations have sufficient strength to mediate high-temperature
superconductivity.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figures, including supplementary information, accepted
for publication in Nature Physic