Published February 23, 2023 | Version v1

Puddle formation and persistent gaps across the non-mean-field breakdown of superconductivity in overdoped (Pb,Bi)2Sr2CuO6+δ

  • 1. Leiden Institute of Physics, Leiden University, 2333 CA Leiden, The Netherlands
  • 2. Leiden Institute of Physics, Leiden University, 2333 CA Leiden, The Netherlands, Department of Quantum Nanoscience, Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CJ Delft, The Netherlands
  • 3. Institute of Physics, University of Amsterdam, 1098 XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  • 4. Institute of Physics, University of Amsterdam, 1098 XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands, QuSoft, 1098 XG Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  • 5. Institute for Solid State Physics, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan
  • 6. Toyota Technological Institute, Nagoya 468-8511, Japan
  • 7. Zhejiang Province Key Laboratory of Quantum Technology and Device, Department of Physics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China, Collaborative Innovation Centre of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjiang 210093, China
  • 8. Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
  • 9. Department of Physics, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611, USA, National Institute of Physics, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City 1101, Philippines
  • 10. Institute-Lorentz for Theoretical Physics, Leiden University, 2333 CA Leiden, The Netherlands

Description

The cuprate high-temperature superconductors exhibit many unexplained electronic phases, but the superconductivity at high doping is often believed to be governed by conventional mean-field Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer theory. However, it was shown that the superfluid density vanishes when the transition temperature goes to zero, in contradiction to expectations from Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer theory. Our scanning tunnelling spectroscopy measurements in the overdoped regime of the (Pb,Bi)2Sr2CuO6+δ high-temperature superconductor show that this is due to the emergence of nanoscale superconducting puddles in a metallic matrix. Our measurements further reveal that this puddling is driven by gap filling instead of gap closing. The important implication is that it is not a diminishing pairing interaction that causes the breakdown of superconductivity. Unexpectedly, the measured gap-to-filling correlation also reveals that pair breaking by disorder does not play a dominant role and that the mechanism of superconductivity in overdoped cuprate superconductors is qualitatively different from conventional mean-field theory.

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5x5_puddle_avg_ldos_enlarged.txt

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