Anomalous isotope Effect in d-wave superconductors on the square lattice

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the anomalous isotope effect observed in cuprate superconductors can be explained by specific electron-phonon couplings, particularly the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger phonon, within a spin fluctuation framework.

Contribution

The study shows that the anomalous isotope effect in cuprates arises from Peierls-like EPCs, especially SSH phonons, providing a new understanding of isotope effects beyond traditional phonon-mediated theories.

Findings

SSH phonons lead to positive isotope effect increasing with decreasing Tc.

Holstein-like EPCs produce negative isotope effect decreasing with doping.

The results align qualitatively with experimental observations in cuprates.

Abstract

Isotope effect with a large coefficient $\alpha=-\partial \ln T_c/\partial \ln M$ is usually taken as an evidence of phonon mediated superconductors in the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory. However, in cuprates which are now widely believed to be strong correlation induced d-wave superconductors, $\alpha$ is experimentally observed to be quite small at optimal doping, but keeps growing up with decreasing $T_c$ upon doping, even after exceeding the BCS value $1/2$. Such an anomalous isotope effect seems to challenge the non-phonon picture and still leave room for the phonon-dominated mechanism. In this work, we show that the anomalous dependence of $\alpha$ on $T_c$ can actually be obtained in spin fluctuation induced d-wave superconductors, by studying the Hubbard model on square lattices with functional renormalization group. We have considered two types of electron-phonon couplings (EPCs). The first type couples to electron densities, including the Holstein, breathing and buckling phonons, called Holstein-like. For all these EPCs, $\alpha$ is negative and drops down towards $-\infty$ with decreasing $T_c$ upon doping. On the opposite, for the other type of Peierls-like EPC coupling to electron hoppings on the nearest bonds, also called Su-Schrieffer-Heeger phonon, $\alpha$ is positive, grows up with decreasing $T_c$ and tends to diverge as $T_c\to0$, in qualitative agreement with the experiments. The difference between these two types of EPCs can be understood by their isotope effects on spin fluctuations. From this study, we conclude that the SSH phonon can explain the anomalous isotope effect in cuprates, although it is not the leading pairing mechanism.