Relationship between and implications of the isotope and pressure effects on transition temperature, penetration depths and conductivities

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that empirical relations in cuprate superconductors align with universal critical properties of anisotropic systems in the 3D-XY class, linking isotope and pressure effects to local lattice distortions and quantum criticality.

Contribution

It establishes a universal scaling framework connecting isotope and pressure effects with critical phenomena in cuprates, emphasizing local lattice distortions and crossover to 2D quantum criticality.

Findings

Scaling relations match experimental isotope and pressure data.

Local lattice distortions preserve unit cell volume.

Crossover to 2D quantum criticality explains superconductivity loss.

Abstract

It is shown that the empirical relations between transition temperature, normal state conductivity linearly extrapolated to the value at the transition temperature, zero temperature penetration depths, etc., as observed in a rich variety of cuprate superconductors, are remarkably consistent with the universal critical properties of anisotropic systems which fall into the 3D-XY universality class and undergo a crossover to a quantum critical point in 2D. The variety includes n- and p-type cuprates, comprises the underdoped and overdoped regimes and the consistency extends up to six decades in the scaling variables. The resulting scaling relations for the oxygen isotope and hydrostatic pressure effects agree with the experimental data and reveal that these effects originate from local lattice distortions preserving the volume of the unit cell. These observations single out 3D and anisotropic microscopic models which incorporate local lattice distortions, fall in the experimentally accessible regime into the 3D-XY universality class, and incorporate the crossover to 2D quantum criticality where superconductivity disappears.