Signatures of charge-order correlations in transport properties of electron-doped cuprate superconductors

TL;DR

This paper identifies charge-order correlations in electron-doped cuprates through transport measurements, revealing their influence on electronic states and superconductivity onset, highlighting a non-monotonous behavior of the metal-insulator crossover temperature.

Contribution

It provides the first transport-based evidence of charge-order correlations in electron-doped cuprates and links these correlations to changes in electronic structure near superconductivity.

Findings

Charge-order correlations cause an anomalous increase in Tmin.

Tmin decreases when superconductivity begins.

Electronic states evolve with charge order, affecting transport properties.

Abstract

The high-temperature superconductivity in copper oxides emerges under strong influence of spin correlations in doped Mott insulators. Recent discoveries of charge-order (CO) correlations in Y-based hole-doped cuprates as well as in electron-doped cuprates suggest that charge correlations should also play an important role on the electronic states of cuprates, although those correlations have been so far detected mainly by x-ray scattering measurements. Here we show signatures of CO correlations in transport properties of electron-doped cuprates as anomalous enhancement of the metal-to-insulator crossover temperature (Tmin) appears in the limited doping range near the onset of superconductivity, while it decreases exactly when superconductivity sets in. We explain this non-monotonous peak-like behavior of Tmin in terms of the evolution of the electronic states through development of CO correlations and appearance of the hole pockets in the folded Fermi surface, which impact on transport properties consecutively at different locations in the momentum space.