Phys.org December 14, 2020
An international team of researchers (France, USA – University of Illinois, Stanford University, Binghamton University, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, University of Maryland, Italy, UK, Argentina, Japan) has confirmed the presence of acoustic plasmons in p-type cuprate superconductors and that they are primarily associated with the oxygen atoms. It seems that the collective charge excitations have strong preference in space, despite the fact that the charges associated with Cu and O atoms are strongly hybridized with each other. Understanding this may help us to clarify the ground state of the cuprate superconductors. This opens new opportunities to study and understand these collective charge excitations and their role in superconductivity. This may make it possible to design very-high-temperature superconductors, which lend themselves to practical applications such as highly efficient energy transmission…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE 1 , 2 (Open Access)
Resonant inelastic x-ray scattering reveals acoustic plasmons associated with oxygen atoms in hole-doped layered cuprate superconductors. Credit: Diamond Light Source