CUPRES · High pressure study of pairing or competing orders in high Tc cuprates
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-04-01 → 2020-03-31
- EU contribution
- €195,455
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
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Results in brief
High pressure study of pairing or competing orders in high Tc cuprates
This project aims to get new insights into to origin of high temperature superconductivity in copper oxide based (cuprate) materials. Superconductivity is a phenomena that has the potential to radically transform almost all applications of electrical power, from high field magnets, to power transmission, motors and generators. Using superconducting materials can significantly reduce our energy usage and enable technologies (such as medical MRI scanners or nuclear fusion reactors) which would be impossible without them. The key to fully realizing this potential is to develop materials which can be operated at high temperature and carry high currents. The materials class with the best current prospects for developing superconducting applications at high temperature are the cuprates, as these have the highest critical temperatures at ambient pressure. It is therefore important to fully understand the phase diagram of these materials in order to be able to use them for applications. As the materials are chemically tuned across the phase diagram two different electronic phases are seen to appear in addition to the superconductivity. The pseudogap phase and the charge density wave (CDW) phases both have end points close to optimal doping (where the superconducting transition temperature Tc is maximum). Hence, both of these phases are of very great interest because critical fluctuations associated with either or both of these phases could be the driving force behind high Tc. Although the CDW as recently be widely studied his relationship with superconductivity is still under debate. Here we used new approaches (high magnetic field, high pressure, disorder and x-ray) to address this problem.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
This project aims to advance our understanding of the electronic structure of high Tc cuprate superconductors. In particular,we will use the unique combination of high pressure and high magnetic fields to study the evolution of two phases whichexist alongside the superconducting state, namely the so-called pseudogap state and a charge ordered state. Both of thesestates have end points which approximately coincide with the point on the doping-temperature phase diagram where thesuperconducting transition temperature is maximal and it has been suggested that fluctuations in the order parameter of oneor both of these phases could be responsible for the electron pairing that leads to high temperature superconductivity. Moststudies to date of these phase, and indeed the cuprates in general, have used chemical doping to tune the materials acrosstheir phase diagram. Instead we plan to use pressure, which is a complementary tuning parameter which we expect to splitthe accidental phase degeneracies which complicate the interpretation of the doping dependent studies. Our experimentalprogramme includes studies of Hall co-efficient, quantum oscillations and magnetic penetration depth to elucidate thechanges in electronic structure. We will also perform x-ray studies under uniaxial stress to correlate changes in electronicstructure to structural changes caused by the charge order.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL · BRISTOLCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union