Quantum spin fluctuations and evolution of electronic structure in cuprates

Abstract

Correlation effects in CuO2 layers give rise to a complicated landscape of collective excitations in high-Tc cuprates. Their description requires an accurate account for electronic fluctuations at a very broad energy range and remains a challenge for the theory. Particularly, there is no conventional explanation of the experimentally observed “resonant” antiferromagnetic mode, which is often considered to be a mediator of superconductivity. Here we model spin excitations of the hole-doped cuprates in the paramagnetic regime and show that this antiferromagnetic mode is associated with electronic transitions between anti-nodal ("X") and ("Y") points of the quasiparticle band that is pinned to the Fermi level. We observe that upon doping of 7–12%, the electronic spectral weight redistribution leads to the formation of a very stable quasiparticle dispersion due to strong correlation effects. The reconstruction of the Fermi surface results in a flattening of the quasiparticle band at the vicinity of the nodal ("M")Γ/2 point, accompanied by a high density of charge carriers. Collective excitations of electrons between the nodal ("M")Γ/2 and ("XM")/2 points form the additional magnetic holes state in magnetic spectrum, which protects the antiferromagnetic fluctuation. Further investigation of the evolution of spin fluctuations with the temperature and doping allowed us to observe the incipience of the antiferromagnetic ordering already in the paramagnetic regime above the transition temperature. Additionally, apart from the most intensive low-energy magnetic excitations, the magnetic spectrum reveals less intensive collective spin fluctuations that correspond to electronic processes between peaks of the single-particle spectral function.