Electronically driven instabilities and superconductivity in the layered La2-xBaxCuO4 perovskites

Role of Sr doping and external strain on relieving bottleneck of oxygen diffusion in La2-xSrxCuO4-δ

In many complex oxides, the oxygen vacancy formation is a promising route to modify the material properties such as a superconductivity and an oxygen diffusivity. Cation substitutions and external strain have been utilized to control the concentration and diffusion of oxygen vacancies, but the mechanisms behind the controls are not fully understood. Using first-principles calculations, we find how Sr doping and external strain greatly enhances the diffusivity of oxygen vacancies in La_2−xSr_xCuO_4−δ (LSCO) in the atomic level. In hole-doped case (2x > δ), the formation energy of an apical vacancy in the LaO layer is larger than its equatorial counterpart by 0.2 eV that the bottleneck of diffusion process is for oxygen vacancies to escape equatorial sites. Such an energy difference can be reduced and even reversed by either small strain (< 1.5%) or short-range attraction between Sr and oxygen vacancy, and in turn, the oxygen diffusivity is greatly enhanced. For fully compensated hole case (2x ≦ δ), the formation energy of an apical vacancy becomes too high that most oxygen vacancies cannot move but would be trapped at equatorial sites. From our electronic structure analysis, we found that the contrasting change in the formation energy by Sr doping and external strain is originated from the different localization natures of electron carrier from both types of oxygen vacancies.

Importance of local band effects for ferromagnetism in hole-doped La2CuO4 cuprate superconductors

Band calculations for supercells of La((2-x))Ba(x)CuO(4) show that the rigid band model for doping is less adequate than what is commonly assumed. In particular, weak ferromagnetism can appear locally around clusters of high Ba concentration. The clustering is important at large dilution, and averaged models for magnetism, such as the virtual crystal approximation, are unable to stabilize magnetic moments. These results give support to the idea that weak ferromagnetism can be the cause of the destruction of superconductivity at high hole doping.

Evolution of midgap states and residual three dimensionality in La2-xSrxCuO4

We carry out extensive first-principles doping-dependent computations of angle-resolved photoemission (ARPES) intensities in La2-xSrxCuO4 over a wide range of binding energies. Intercell hopping and the associated three dimensionality, which is usually neglected in discussing cuprate physics, is shown to play a key role in shaping the ARPES spectra. Despite the obvious importance of strong coupling effects (e.g., the presence of a lower Hubbard band coexisting with midgap states in the doped insulator), a number of salient features of the experimental ARPES spectra are captured to a surprising extent when kz dispersion is properly included in the analysis.

Oxygen Interstitials in Superconducting La2CuO4: Their Valence State and Role

The nature of the much debated valence state of an interstitial oxygen atom in oxygen-doped La2CuO4 is the subject of this paper. In model cluster calculations, we studied the position, charge, and spin state of the interstitial oxygen atoms in this superconductor. The models considered allow the interstitial oxygen to move off a symmetrical position, to have varying spin and charge, and to be surrounded by various magnetic environments. UB3LYP calculations show that a model having an interstitial oxygen atom with a total spin of 1 is lowest in energy; the interstitial oxygen atoms here act as stable radicals with a net charge of -1. These results agree with experimental evidence for the paramagnetic behavior for interstitial atoms. The energy associated with a spin flip at a Cu site in our models is lower if interstitial oxygen has a local electron spin density, compared to the case when it does not. We provide a possible explanation for the increase of the doping concentrations of interstitial oxygen with a decrease of the Néel temperature of this system. The relative stability of the models we consider depends on their spin states, accompanied by structural changes; this explains indirectly the experimental change of the slope (from 2 to 1.3) of the linear relationship between the hole concentration and the oxygen content. Our results support a stripe phase in high temperature superconductivity; in our calculations, hole doping to the copper oxide layer comes only through the formation of an oxygen interstitial pair, not from any change of the local structural environment and magnetic field around the single interstitial.

Spin Susceptibility Scaling in High-Temperature Superconductors

The spin response of a nested Fermi surface represented by a tight binding energy band is found to exhibit scaling in frequency divided by temperature within a restricted regime close to half-filling of the band. Computations of the spin susceptibility reveal a surprising momentum variation at various temperatures and frequencies. Neutron scattering data on the high-temperature superconductor YBa(2)Cu(3)O(6+x) are analyzed for scaling near a momentum vector that spans nested regions of the orbit. Changes in the Fermi energy remove the scaling properties and reduce the susceptibility to the conventional Fermi liquid behavior of ordinary metals. These results imply that pairing mechanisms of superconductivity need to cope with competing spin density wave and charge density wave instabilities.