On the interplay of Jahn-Teller physics and Mott physics in cuprates

Abstract

The extended two-story house model which is now called the Kamimura-Suwa (K-S) model has clarified how the interplay of Mott physics and Jahn-Teller physics plays an important role in determining the superconducting as well as metallic state of underdoped cuprates. In this paper it is first pointed out for underdoped cuprates that Mott physics leads to the existence of local antiferromagnetic order constructed from the localized spins while that the anti-Jahn-Teller effect as a central issue of Jahn-Teller physics leads to the existence of two kinds of orbitals parallel and perpendicular to a CuO 2 plane whose states have nearly the same energy. As a result of the interplay of both physics the K-S model has shown that the exchange interactions between the spins of a localized hole and of a carrier hole play an important role in producing the coexistence of superconductivity and antiferromagnetism in underdoped cuprates. The appearance of d-wave superconductivity even in the phonon-involved mechanism is also shown to be due to the interplay of Jahn-Teller physics and Mott Physics. Brief review of these facts as well as the K-S model is given in this paper. More outstanding result in this paper is that the origin of pseudogap in the deeply underdoped regime has been clarified. In this paper it is shown theoretically for the first time that the so-called T* pseudogap observed in ARPES, STM and tunneling experiments below T c in underdoped cuprates corresponds to the real transition of photo-excited electrons from the occupied states in the originally conduction band below the superconducting gap to a free-electron state above the vacuum level. Thus we conclude that the T* pseudogap in the underdoped cuprates which increases with decreasing the hole concentration is not pseudo, but a real gap which exists even below Tc. © 2008 IOP Publishing Ltd.