Anisotropic scattering caused by apical oxygen vacancies in thin films of overdoped high-temperature cuprate superconductors

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that anisotropic scattering from apical oxygen vacancies explains the anomalous superfluid density behavior and optical conductivity in overdoped cuprate superconductors, reconciling experimental observations with standard BCS theory.

Contribution

It shows that anisotropic scattering due to apical oxygen vacancies accounts for the observed phenomena, providing a unified explanation within the $d$-wave BCS framework.

Findings

Anisotropic scattering explains the linear drop of superfluid density at low temperatures.

It accounts for the linear scaling between superfluid density and $T_c$ in overdoped cuprates.

The model explains the missing Drude weight in optical conductivity measurements.

Abstract

There is a hot debate on the anomalous behavior of superfluid density $\rho_s$ in overdoped La$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$CuO$_4$ films in recent years. The linear drop of $\rho_s$ at low temperatures implies the superconductors are clean, but the linear scaling between $\rho_s$ (in the zero temperature limit) and the transition temperature $T_c$ is a hallmark of the dirty limit in the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) framework [I. Bozovic et al., Nature 536, 309 (2016)]. This dichotomy motivated exotic theories beyond the standard BCS theory. We show, however, that such a dichotomy can be reconciled naturally by the role of increasing anisotropic scattering caused by the apical oxygen vacancies. Furthermore, the anisotropic scattering also explains the "missing" Drude weight upon doping in the optical conductivity, as reported in the THz experiment [F. Mahmood et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 027003 (2019)]. Therefore, the overdoped cuprates can actually be described consistently by the $d$-wave BCS theory with the unique anisotropic scattering.