Bosonics in the Copper and Iron based High Transition Temperature Superconductors

Abstract

It has been long established that the phenomenon of superconductivity is administered by lattice deformations (phonons) which act to pair electrons into spinless bosons free to condense into a coherent ground state. This superconducting phase is protected up to a critical temperature above which thermal fluctuations are potent enough to destroy the resistance free phase. The strength of this phonon mediation has been calculated by strong coupling theory and found to be capable of accommodating pairing up to near 40 K. So with the advent of copper-oxide (cuprate) superconductors boasting transitions temperatures exceeding 90 K it was clear that these material represented a new breed of superconducting physics. More than twenty years after the initial discovery of these high-transition temperatures the most basic questions are yet to be answered, the most fundamental of which is by what mechanism does pairing occur? The field splits between those who feel that a boson mediator is still necessary to act as the virtual glue which binds electrons into cooper pairs while others insist that really the Coulomb force alone is enough to induce pairing physics. Even within the boson-seeker community there is no consensus on what particular type of boson is contained in this system whether it be a lattice excitation or spin excitation. This answer has been clouded by previous experimental results on the hole-doped cuprates which have made strong cases for every scenario rendering them largely inconclusive. For this answer though it is possible to explore materials that have not yet been clouded by conflicting results by performing the first high resolution ultra-high-vacuum low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) study of an electron-doped cuprate. A distinct and unambiguous bosonic mode is found at energy near 10.5 meV. Through comparison with other experimental data it is found that this mode does not fit the characteristics of a phonon. It is found, through comparison with neutron scattering experiments on the same sample, that this mode is consistent with a spin collective mode. Further more it is found that this mode is linked with the strength of superconductivity nominating it as the possible electron pairing mechanism. Doping and temperature dependence studies are performed to investigate this possibility. Finally the same procedures developed can be applied to the newly discovered iron based superconductors which may represent yet another type of new superconductor physics. Initial results on the first bosonic mode STM study of SrFe$_{2-x}$Co$_{x}$As$_{2}$ and BaFe$_{2-x}$Co$_{x}$As$_{2}$ are presented.