Ferromagnetic order beyond the superconducting dome in a cuprate superconductor

TL;DR

This study discovers itinerant ferromagnetic order in overdoped cuprate La$_{2-x}$Ce$_x$CuO$_4$, challenging the view that overdoped cuprates are simple Fermi liquids and indicating richer electron correlation effects.

Contribution

It reports the unexpected emergence of ferromagnetic order beyond the superconducting dome in an electron-doped cuprate, revealing complex electron correlations in the overdoped regime.

Findings

Ferromagnetic order appears below 4K in overdoped cuprates.

Signatures include hysteretic magnetoresistance and magnetization.

Overdoped cuprates are influenced by electron correlations, not just Fermi liquid behavior.

Abstract

The cuprate high-temperature superconductors (HTSC) have been the subject of intense study for more than 30 years with no consensus yet on the underlying mechanism of the superconductivity. Conventional wisdom dictates that the mysterious and extraordinary properties of the cuprates arise from doping a strongly correlated antiferromagnetic (AFM) insulator (1,2). The highly overdoped cuprates$-$those beyond the dome of superconductivity (SC)--are considered to be conventional Fermi liquid metals (3). Here, we report the emergence of itinerant ferromagnetic order (FM) below 4K for doping beyond the SC dome in electron-doped La$_{2-x} $Ce$_x$CuO$_4$ (LCCO). The existence of this FM order is evidenced by negative, anisotopic and hysteretic magnetoresistance, hysteretic magnetization, and the polar Kerr effect, all of which are standard signatures of itinerant FM in metals (4,5). This surprising new result suggests that the overdoped cuprates are also influenced by electron correlations and the physics is much richer than that of a conventional Fermi liquid metal.