Bipartite electronic superstructures in the vortex core of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27230420.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms11747 and PMC identifier 4895017.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The central issue in the physics of cuprate superconductivity is the mutual relationship among superconductivity, pseudogap and broken-spatial-symmetry states. A magnetic field B suppresses superconductivity, providing an opportunity to investigate the competition among these states. Although various B-induced electronic superstructures have been reported, their energy, spatial and momentum-space structures are unclear. Here, we show using spectroscopic-imaging scanning tunnelling microscopy on Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ that there are two distinct B-induced electronic superstructures, both being localized in the vortex core but appearing at different energies. In the low-energy range where the nodal Bogoliubov quasiparticles are well-defined, we observe the so-called vortex checkerboard that we identify as the B-enhanced quasiparticle interference pattern. By contrast, in the high-energy region where the pseudogap develops, the broken-spatial-symmetry patterns that pre-exist at B=0 T is locally enhanced in the vortex core. This evidences the competition between superconductivity and the broken-spatial-symmetry state that is associated with the pseudogap.