Ubiquitous suppression of the nodal coherent spectral weight in Bi-based cuprates

TL;DR

This study uses advanced ARPES techniques to reveal that the suppression of nodal coherent spectral weight in Bi-based cuprates occurs universally with temperature, independent of superconducting or pseudogap phases, and is explained by Fermi-Liquid theory.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of the temperature-dependent nodal spectral weight suppression across different Bi cuprates using combined equilibrium and time-resolved ARPES.

Findings

Nodal CSW suppression is ubiquitous across Bi cuprates.

Suppression is independent of superconducting and pseudogap temperatures.

Fermi-Liquid model explains the spectral lineshape and suppression behavior.

Abstract

High-temperature superconducting cuprates exhibit an intriguing phenomenology for the low-energy elementary excitations. In particular, an unconventional temperature dependence of the coherent spectral weight (CSW) has been observed in the superconducting phase by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), both at the antinode where the d-wave paring gap is maximum, as well as along the gapless nodal direction. Here, we combine equilibrium and time-resolved ARPES to track the temperature dependent meltdown of the nodal CSW in Bi-based cuprates with unprecedented sensitivity. We find the nodal suppression of CSW upon increasing temperature to be ubiquitous across single- and double-layer Bi cuprates, and uncorrelated to superconducting and pseudogap onset temperatures. We quantitatively model both the lineshape of the nodal spectral features and the anomalous suppression of CSW within the Fermi-Liquid framework, establishing the key role played by the normal state electrodynamics in the description of nodal quasiparticles in superconducting cuprates.