Reply to Comment on "High-field studies of superconducting fluctuations in high-Tc cuprates: Evidence for a small gap distinct from the large pseudogap" by M.V. Ramallo et al

TL;DR

This paper clarifies that superconducting fluctuations in high-Tc cuprates sharply vanish with temperature, and their behavior depends on doping and disorder, challenging previous claims of universality.

Contribution

The authors provide experimental evidence that SCF cutoff depends on doping and disorder, and critique the universality of the extended Gaussian Ginzburg-Landau theory.

Findings

SCF sharply vanish with increasing T

Cutoff depends on doping and disorder

Layer coupling is significant up to 1.1Tc

Abstract

The experimental investigations done in our paper Phys.Rev.B84,014522(2011) allowed us to establish that the superconducting fluctuations (SCF) always die out sharply with increasing T. But contrary to the claim done in the comment of Ramallo et al., this sharp cutoff of SCF measured in YBa2Cu3O{6+x} depends on hole doping and/or disorder. So our data cannot be used to claim for a universality of the extended gaussian Ginzburg Landau theory proposed by the authors of the comment. Furthermore, to explain quantitatively our data near optimal doping using this model they need to consider that fluctuations in the two CuO2 planes of a bilayer are totally decoupled, which is not physically well justified. On the contrary a consistent interpretation of all our data (paraconductivity, Nernst effect and magnetoresistance) has been done by considering that the coupling between the two layers of the unit cell is dominant at least up to 1.1Tc.