Jenny Hoffman

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Imaging Quasiparticle Inteference in Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O_8+x

J.E. Hoffman,¹ K. McElroy,¹ D.-H. Lee,¹ K. M. Lang,^1,2 H. Eisaki,^3,4 S. Uchida,³ J. C. Davis^1,2
1Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-7300, USA
²Electromagnetic Tech. Division, NIST, Boulder, CO 80305
³Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94205-4060, USA
⁴AIST, 1-1-1 Central 2, Umezono, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8568 Japan
⁵ Department of Superconductivity, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 113-8656 Japan
⁶Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA

Science Volume 297 1148-1151 (16 August 2002).

Abstract

Scanning tunneling spectroscopy of the high-Tc superconductor Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O_8+x reveals weak, incommensurate, spatial modulations in the tunneling conductance. Images of these energy-dependent modulations are Fourier analyzed to yield the dispersion of their wavevectors. Comparison of the dispersions with photoemission spectroscopy data indicates that quasiparticle interference, due to elastic scattering between characteristic regions of momentum-space, provides a consistent explanation for the conductance modulations, without appeal to another order parameter. These results refocus attention on quasiparticle scattering processes as potential explanations for other incommensurate phenomena in the cuprates. The momentum-resolved tunneling spectroscopy demonstrated here also provides a new technique with which to study quasiparticles in correlated materials.

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