Spontaneous time reversal symmetry breaking in the pseudogap state of high-Tc superconductors

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking in the pseudogap state of high-Tc superconductors, revealing a phase transition at T* that clarifies a key mystery in cuprate phase diagrams.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence of time-reversal symmetry breaking at T* using circularly polarized photoemission, indicating a new phase transition in the pseudogap state.

Findings

Time-reversal symmetry is broken below T* in the pseudogap state.

Left and right circularly polarized light produce different photocurrents.

The phase transition at T* is linked to an order parameter.

Abstract

When matter undergoes a phase transition from one state to another, usually a change in symmetry is observed, as some of the symmetries exhibited are said to be spontaneously broken. The superconducting phase transition in the underdoped high-Tc superconductors is rather unusual, in that it is not a mean-field transition as other superconducting transitions are. Instead, it is observed that a pseudo-gap in the electronic excitation spectrum appears at temperatures T* higher than Tc, while phase coherence, and superconductivity, are established at Tc (Refs. 1, 2). One would then wish to understand if T* is just a crossover, controlled by fluctuations in order which will set in at the lower Tc (Refs. 3, 4), or whether some symmetry is spontaneously broken at T* (Refs. 5-10). Here, using angle-resolved photoemission with circularly polarized light, we find that, in the pseudogap state, left-circularly polarized photons give a different photocurrent than right-circularly polarized photons, and therefore the state below T* is rather unusual, in that it breaks time reversal symmetry11. This observation of a phase transition at T* provides the answer to a major mystery of the phase diagram of the cuprates. The appearance of the anomalies below T* must be related to the order parameter that sets in at this characteristic temperature .