Bose-Einstein condensation of strongly correlated electrons and phonons in cuprate superconductors

TL;DR

This paper proposes that high-temperature superconductivity in cuprates arises from Bose-Einstein condensation of superlight bipolarons formed by strong electron-phonon interactions, supported by various experimental observations.

Contribution

It introduces a bipolaron-based model for cuprate superconductivity, emphasizing 3D Bose-Einstein condensation over phase fluctuation scenarios.

Findings

Support for bipolaron formation from optical and isotope measurements

Quantum Monte Carlo simulations confirm itinerant bipolarons in cuprates

Parameter-free calculations match experimental critical temperatures and other properties

Abstract

The long-range Froehlich electron-phonon interaction has been identified as the most essential for pairing in high-temperature superconductors owing to poor screening, as is now confirmed by optical, isotope substitution, recent photoemission and some other measurements. I argue that low energy physics in cuprate superconductors is that of superlight small bipolarons, which are real-space hole pairs dressed by phonons in doped charge-transfer Mott insulators. They are itinerant quasiparticles existing in the Bloch states at low temperatures as also confirmed by continuous-time quantum Monte-Carlo algorithm (CTQMC) fully taking into account realistic Coulomb and long-range Froehlich interactions. Here I suggest that a parameter-free evaluation of Tc, unusual upper critical fields, the normal state Nernst effect, diamagnetism, the Hall-Lorenz numbers and giant proximity effects strongly support the three-dimensional (3D) Bose-Einstein condensation of mobile small bipolarons with zero off-diagonal order parameter above the resistive critical temperature Tc at variance with phase fluctuation scenarios of cuprates.