Supercurrent flow with large superconductor gap in cuprates: Resurrection of phonon-mediated Cooper pairs

TL;DR

This paper revisits BCS theory to demonstrate that phonon-mediated interactions can explain high-temperature superconductivity in cuprates, emphasizing the role of electron-phonon coupling and quantum phase transitions.

Contribution

It extends BCS theory to include a generalized electron-phonon potential and ionization energy considerations, explaining high Tsc and optimal doping in cuprates.

Findings

Strengthened Cooper-pair binding energy enables high Tsc.

Existence of a quantum phase transition between superconducting and metallic phases.

Specific heat capacity jump linked to finite-temperature quantum phase transition.

Abstract

We systematically explore the exquisiteness of Bardeen-Cooper-Schriefer(BCS) theory where the BCS-type electron-phonon interaction is unambiguously reinforced as the only viable superglue in cuprate superconductors because phonon-induced scattering is effectively nil for Cooper pairs (in its original form), and also phonons are never required to Bose-condense. Here, we prove that (i) the Cooper-pair binding energy can be strengthened to obtain high superconductor transition temperature (Tsc) and (ii) the existence of a generalized electron-phonon potential operator that can induce the finite-temperature quantum phase transition between superconducting and strange metallic phases. To lend support for this extended BCS theory, we derive the Fermi-Dirac statistics for Cooper-pair electrons, which correctly captures the physics of strongly bounded Cooper-pair break up with respect to changing temperature or superconductor gap (gap-BCS). Finally, we further extend the BCS formalism within the ionization energy theory to prove (iii) the existence of optimal doping that has maximum Tsc(x_optimum) or gap-BCS (x_optimum), and (iv) that the specific heat capacity jump at Tsc in cuprates is due to finite-temperature quantum phase transition. Along the way, we expose the precise microscopic reason why predicting (not guessing) a superconductor material properly is in general a hard problem within any theory that require pairing mechanism.