Magnon–phonon coupling and implications for charge-density wave states and superconductivity in cuprates

The mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity of copper oxides (cuprates) remains unsolved puzzle in condensed matter physics. The cuprates represent extremely complicated system, showing fascinating variety of quantum phenomena and rich phase diagram as a function of doping. In the suggested “superconducting glue” mechanisms, phonon and spin excitations are invoked most frequently, and it appears that only spin excitations cover the energy scale required to justify very high transition temperature Tc ~ 165 K (as in mercury-based triple layer cuprates compressed to 30 GPa). It appears that pressure is quite important variable helping to boost the Tc record by almost 30°. Pressure may be also considered as a clean tuning parameter, helping to understand the underlying balance of various energy scales and ordered states in cuprates. In this paper, a review of mostly our work on cuprates under pressure will be given, with the emphasis on the interactions between phonon and spin excitations. It appears that there is a strong coupling between superexchange interaction and stretching in-plane oxygen vibrations, which may give rise to a variety of complex phenomena, including the charge-density wave state intertwined with superconductivity and attracting a lot of interest recently

Comparison of structural transformations and superconductivity in compressed Sulfur and Selenium

Density-functional calculations are presented for high-pressure structural phases of S and Se. The structural phase diagrams, phonon spectra, electron-phonon coupling, and superconducting properties of the isovalent elements are compared. We find that with increasing pressure, Se adopts a sequence of ever more closely packed structures (beta-Po, bcc, fcc), while S favors more open structures (beta-Po, simple cubic, bcc). These differences are shown to be attributable to differences in the S and Se core states. All the compressed phases of S and Se considered are calculated to have weak to moderate electron-phonon coupling strengths consistent with superconducting transition temperatures in the range of 1 to 20 K. Our results compare well with experimental data on the beta-Po --> bcc transition pressure in Se and on the superconducting transition temperature in beta-Po S. Further experiments are suggested to search for the other structural phases predicted at higher pressures and to test theoretical results on the electron-phonon interaction and superconducting properties

Energy landscape of clathrate hydrates

Clathrate hydrates are nanoporous crystalline materials made of a network of hydrogen-bonded water molecules (forming host cages) that is stabilized by the presence of foreign (generally hydrophobic) guest molecules. The natural existence of large quantities of hydrocarbon hydrates in deep oceans and permafrost is certainly at the origin of numerous applications in the broad areas of energy and environmental sciences and technologies (e.g. gas storage). At a fundamental level, their nanostructuration confers on these materials specific properties (e.g. their “glass-like” thermal conductivity) for which the host-guest interactions play a key role. These interactions occur on broad timescale and thus require the use of multi-technique approach in which neutron scattering brings unvaluable information. This work reviews the dynamical properties of clathrate hydrates, ranging from intramolecular vibrations to Brownian relaxations; it illustrates the contribution of neutron scattering in the understanding of the underlying factors governing chemical-physics properties specific to these nanoporous systems