Nanoscale Structures and Pseudogap in Under-doped High-Tc Superconductors

Abstract

We show that superconductor–insulator transitions in oxides and FeAs-based high Tc superconducting multilayers may arise due to a charge density wave instability induced by charged impurities and the over-screening of the long-ranged part of the Coulomb interaction, which is enhanced due to decreasing carrier density [1]. When the carrier density is low enough, impurities begin to trap particles and form bound states of clusters of charge carriers, which we call Coulomb bubbles. These bubbles are embedded inside the superconductor and form nuclei of the new insulating state. The growth of a bubble is terminated by the Coulomb force and each of them has a quantized charge and a fluctuating phase. When clusters first appear, they are covered by superfluid liquid due to the proximity effect and invisible. However, when the carrier density decreases the size of bubbles increases and the superconducting proximity inside them vanishes. The insulating state arises via a percolation of these insulating islands, which form a giant percolating cluster that prevents the flow of the electrical supercurrent through the system. We also show the formation of two groups of charge carriers in these compounds associated with free and localized states. The localized component arises due to the Coulomb bubbles. Our results are consistent with the two-component picture for cuprates deducted earlier by Gorkov and Teitelbaum [2] from the analysis of the Hall effect data and ARPES spectra. The Coulomb clusters induce nanoscale superstructures observed in scanning tunneling microscope (STM) experiments [3] and are responsible for the pseudogap [4].