Magnetic Field Effect on the Infrared Response of an Underdoped YBa2Cu3O6.6 Single Crystal

Abstract

AbstractThe cuprate high-Tc superconductors (HTSC) were discovered in 1986 [Bednorz JG, Müller KA (1986) Possible high Tc superconductivity in the Ba−La−Cu−O system. Zeitschrift für Physik B Condensed Matter 64:189–193] and still hold the record Tc value [Keimer B, Kivelson SA, Norman MR, Uchida S, Zaanen J (2015) From quantum matter to high-temperature superconductivity in copper oxides. Nature 518:179–186] for materials at atmospheric pressure with Tc = 135 K in Hg-1223 [Schilling A, Cantoni M, Guo JD, Ott HR (1993) Superconductivity above 130 K in the Hg-Ba-Ca-Cu-O system. Nature 363:56–58]. These cuprates have a rich phase diagram with various charge or spin ordered states that coexist or compete with superconductivity (SC). In the following, we performed magneto-optical measurements up to 30 T on an underdoped, twinned YBa2Cu3O6.6 crystal with Tc = 58(1) K, and compared these with the temperature-dependent spectra. It was previous shown that such high magnetic fields suppress superconductivity [Grissonnanche G, Cyr-Choinière O, Laliberté F, René de Cotret S, Juneau-Fecteau A, Dufour-Beauséjour S, Delage MÈ, LeBoeuf D, Chang J, Ramshaw BJ, Bonn DA, Hardy WN, Liang R, Adachi S, Hussey NE, Vignolle B, Proust C, Sutherland M, Krämer S, Park JH, Graf D, Doiron-Leyraud N, Taillefer L (2014) Direct measurement of the upper critical field in cuprate superconductors. Nat Commun 5:3280; Zhou R, Hirata M, Wu T, Vinograd I, Mayaffre H, Krämer S, Reyes AP, Kuhns PL, Liang R, Hardy WN, Bonn DA, Julien M-H (2017) Spin susceptibility of charge-ordered YBa2Cu3Oy across the upper critical field. Proc Natl Acad Sci 114:13148–13153; Marcenat C, Demuer A, Beauvois K, Michon B, Grockowiak A, Liang R, Hardy W, Bonn DA, Klein T (2015) Calorimetric determination of the magnetic phase diagram of underdoped ortho II YBa2Cu3O6.54 single crystals. Nat Commun 6:7927] and a static and long-range ordered charge density wave is established [Gerber S, Jang H, Nojiri H, Matsuzawa S, Yasumura H, Bonn DA, Liang R, Hardy WN, Islam Z, Mehta A, Song S, Sikorski M, Stefanescu D, Feng Y, Kivelson SA, Devereaux TP, Shen Z-X, Kao C-C, Lee W-S, Zhu D, Lee J-S (2015) Three-dimensional charge density wave order in YBa2Cu3O6.67 at high magnetic fields. Science 350:949–952].