AI Article Synopsis
- High-temperature superconductivity in copper oxides emerges when a parent insulator is doped beyond a certain limit, but the nature of the transition from superconductor to insulator remains unclear.
- Researchers utilized electric fields to manipulate carrier density, employing advanced techniques to achieve the necessary conditions in copper oxides, particularly through the use of ultrathin films and ionic liquids.
- Their findings revealed significant shifts in critical temperature and resistance behavior consistent with quantum phase transitions, indicating that the observed critical resistance relates directly to the quantum behavior of Cooper pairs in these materials.
Article Abstract
High-temperature superconductivity in copper oxides arises when a parent insulator compound is doped beyond some critical concentration; what exactly happens at this superconductor-insulator transition is a key open question. The cleanest approach is to tune the carrier density using the electric field effect; for example, it was learned in this way that weak electron localization transforms superconducting SrTiO(3) into a Fermi-glass insulator. But in the copper oxides this has been a long-standing technical challenge, because perfect ultrathin films and huge local fields (>10(9) V m(-1)) are needed. Recently, such fields have been obtained using electrolytes or ionic liquids in the electric double-layer transistor configuration. Here we report synthesis of epitaxial films of La(2- x)Sr(x)CuO(4) that are one unit cell thick, and fabrication of double-layer transistors. Very large fields and induced changes in surface carrier density enable shifts in the critical temperature by up to 30 K. Hundreds of resistance versus temperature and carrier density curves were recorded and shown to collapse onto a single function, as predicted for a two-dimensional superconductor-insulator transition. The observed critical resistance is precisely the quantum resistance for pairs, R(Q) = h/(2e) = 6.45 kΩ, suggestive of a phase transition driven by quantum phase fluctuations, and Cooper pair (de)localization.
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Article Synopsis
- The superconductor-insulator transition (SIT) in two dimensions represents a key quantum phase transition with a quantum critical point at absolute zero temperature (T=0).
- In certain weakly disordered or crystalline thin films, an anomalous metallic (AM) state shows up between superconducting and insulating states, complicating the traditional QPT understanding of SIT.
- Measurements of the Nernst effect reveal a ghost-temperature line marking a thermal-to-quantum crossover, helping to locate the QCP within the AM state, thereby suggesting that the AM state is a critical extension of the SIT.
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