Abstract
The oxygen isotope effect on the relaxation rate of crystal-field excitations in the slightly underdoped high-temperature superconductor HoBa 2Cu 4O 8 (T c =79 K) has been investigated by means of inelastic neutron scattering. When going from 16O to 18O the pseudogap temperature T* is shifted from 170 to 220 K, whereas the critical temperature remains almost unaffected. This huge isotope shift observed for T* which is absent in NMR and NQR experiments suggests that the mechanism leading to an isotope effect on the pseudogap has to involve a time scale in the range 10 −8 s >> τ > 10 −13 s.
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