Spontaneous breaking of time-reversal symmetry in the pseudogap state of a high-Tc superconductor

A. Kaminski, Stephanie Rosenkranz, H. M. Fretwell, J. C. Campuzano, Z. Li, H. Raffy, W. G. Cullen, H. You, C. G. Olson, C. M. Varma and H. Höchst
Additional contact information
A. Kaminski: University of Illinois at Chicago
H. M. Fretwell: University of Wales Swansea
J. C. Campuzano: University of Illinois at Chicago
Z. Li: Université Paris-Sud
H. Raffy: Université Paris-Sud
W. G. Cullen: Argonne National Laboratory
H. You: Argonne National Laboratory
C. G. Olson: Iowa State University
C. M. Varma: Lucent Technologies
H. Höchst: Synchrotron Radiation Center

Nature, 2002, vol. 416, issue 6881, 610-613

Abstract: Abstract A change in ‘symmetry’ is often observed when matter undergoes a phase transition—the symmetry is said to be spontaneously broken. The transition made by underdoped high-transition-temperature (high-Tc) superconductors is unusual, in that it is not a mean-field transition as seen in other superconductors. Rather, there is a region in the phase diagram above the superconducting transition temperature Tc (where phase coherence and superconductivity begin) but below a characteristic temperature T* where a ‘pseudogap’ appears in the spectrum of electronic excitations1,2. It is therefore important to establish if T* is just a cross-over temperature arising from fluctuations in the order parameter that will establish superconductivity at Tc (refs 3, 4), or if it marks a phase transition where symmetry is spontaneously broken5,6,7,8,9,10. Here we report that, for a material in the pseudogap state, left-circularly polarized photons give a different photocurrent from right-circularly polarized photons. This shows that time-reversal symmetry is spontaneously broken11 below T*, which therefore corresponds to a phase transition.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/416610a Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:416:y:2002:i:6881:d:10.1038_416610a

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/416610a

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().