Hole content dependent fluctuation diamagnetism in YBa2Cu3O7-{\delta}: possible role of the pseudogap

TL;DR

This paper investigates how hole content and the pseudogap influence fluctuation diamagnetism in YBa2Cu3O7-{ extdelta} high-Tc superconductors, revealing that the pseudogap's effects are distinct from superconducting fluctuations.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the pseudogap causes an anomalous decrease in magnetic susceptibility and that the mean-field Ginzburg-Landau formalism cannot fully explain underdoped behavior, highlighting their independence.

Findings

Total energy cut-off improves fluctuation susceptibility modeling.

Pseudogap reduces normal state magnetic susceptibility.

Superconducting fluctuations are independent of the pseudogap effects.

Abstract

This study focuses on the temperature and hole content dependent fluctuation diamagnetism of hole doped YBa2Cu3O7-delta (Y123) high-Tc superconductors. Two different compositions of Y123 have been considered with in-plane hole content (p): 0.161 (optimally doped) and 0.143 (underdoped). The fluctuation induced excess diamagnetic susceptibility, Delta_chi(T), has been investigated via the mean-field Gaussian-Ginzburg-Landau (MFGGL) formalism with and without a total energy cut-off in the fluctuating modes. It has been found that inclusion of total energy cut-off describes the Delta_chi(T) data significantly better. Furthermore, the pseudogap (PG) itself induces an anomalous decrease in the normal state magnetic susceptibility. By means of the analysis of Delta_chi(T)/T at different hole concentrations, we have explored the possible role of the PG on diamagnetic fluctuations. It has been found that MFGGL formalism is not able to reproduce the Delta_chi(T)/T features for the underdoped compound over a broad range of reduced temperature, Epsilon [= ln(T/Tc)]. The discrepancy becomes prominent in the temperature range where PG dominates the normal state magnetic susceptibility data. The agreement between the theoretical prediction and experimental Delta_chi(T) is better for the optimally doped compound with p = 0.161, where the effect of the PG is small. This notable difference implies that PG induced reduction in the magnetic susceptibility is not related directly to the superconducting fluctuations which in turn indicate that electronic correlations giving rise to the PG and Cooper pairing are independent to each other.