Condensation Energy and High Tc Superconductivity

TL;DR

This paper analyzes specific heat data of cuprate superconductors to accurately estimate the condensation energy, emphasizing the importance of including fluctuation contributions which were previously neglected, leading to more precise understanding of high Tc superconductivity.

Contribution

It demonstrates that fluctuation effects must be included when extracting condensation energy from specific heat data, correcting prior estimations that subtracted these fluctuations.

Findings

Fluctuation contributions significantly affect the specific heat near the transition.

Previous methods underestimated condensation energy by neglecting fluctuations.

Accurate condensation energy estimation requires accounting for fluctuation effects.

Abstract

From an analysis of the specific heat of one of the cuprate superconductors it is shown, that even if a large part of the experimental specific heat associated with the superconducting phase transition is due to fluctuations, this part must be counted when one tries to extract the condensation energy from the data. Previous work by Chakravarty, Kee and Abrahams, where the fluctuation part was subtracted, has resulted in an incorrect estimation of the condensation energy.