Condensed Matter Seminar, Thursday May 20, 2010

Gamow Tower 11th floor commons room, 12:00pm


Photoemission on thin films: New perspective on tailored HTCS systems

Luc Patthey, Paul Scherrer Institut

Despite intense research, the origin of high-temperature super-conductivity (HTCS) is far from being understood. The nature of the pseudogap, in the underdoped regime, still remains an open question. Contrary to the overdoped regime, which displays a large hole-like Fermi Surface (FS) resembling a conventional metal, the underdoped regime shows strong deviations from Fermi liquid behaviors. Recent observation of quantum oscillations in the high magnetic field phase of underdoped YBa2Cu3O77-d (Y123) indicates the existence of small FS pockets. Due to the lack of natural cleaving plane and the strong polarity of the Y123 surface, only few angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) studies have been carried out in this system. In the presented study, we performed ARPES on Y123 thin films produced by in-situ Pulse Laser Deposition (PLD), which is an alternative approach from conventional ARPES on cleaved single crystal. The FS and low energy electronic structure from Y123 thin films display a clear Ortho II band folding, showing how order within the CuO chains strongly affect the electronic properties of the superconducting CuO2 planes. This present approach opens the door to: 1) systematic studies in the remaining question concerning the ambiguous nature of the pseudogap phase for high-temperature cuprates, 2) tailored superconductor thin films (single- or multi-layers) where strain- and magnetic-induced effects on superconductivity can be investigated by ARPES.