High Temperature Superconductivity in the Cuprates: Materials, Phenomena and a Mechanism

TL;DR

This paper reviews high-temperature superconductivity in cuprates, discussing their materials, electronic phenomena like pseudogap and Fermi arc, and a phenomenological theory explaining d-wave symmetry superconductivity and related effects.

Contribution

It introduces a Ginzburg Landau-like phenomenological theory that successfully explains various experimental observations in cuprate superconductors.

Findings

Successful modeling of d-wave symmetry superconductivity

Explanation of pseudogap and Fermi arc phenomena

Application to fluctuation diamagnetism and Nernst effect

Abstract

Superconductivity in the cuprates, discovered in the late 1980s and occurring at unprecedentedly high temperatures (up to about 140K) in about thirty chemically distinct families, continues to be a major problem in physics. In this article, after a brief introduction of these square planar materials with weak interlayer coupling, we mention some of the salient electronic properties of hole doped cuprates such as the pseudogap phase and the Fermi arc . We then outline a phenomenological, Ginzburg Landau like theory developed by some of us for the emergent d-wave symmetry superconductivity in these materials, and confronted successfully with a large amount of experimental information. A more recent application of the approach to fluctuation diamagnetism and to the anomalously large Nernst effect is also discussed.