Research Description
Copper-oxide (cuprate) high-temperature superconductors have the highest superconducting transition temperature at ambient pressure, and the mechanism by which they become superconducting remains debated. Many proposed mechanisms look to the low-carrier density side, often invoking the parent compound or nearby electronic phases for excitations that may be relevant to superconductivity. However, recent discoveries in the high-carrier density regime emphasize that the physics there is richer than previously assumed and may also be relevant to the superconducting mechanism.
Inna Vishik’s group aims to uncover electronic properties of high-temperature superconductors at very high carrier densities, their spatial variation, and their correlation with local chemical composition.
Dr. Vishik’s team will utilize synergies between modern synthesis techniques that can push copper oxides into new parameter regimes, experimental tools to learn how electrons move around in microscopic regions of a specimen and interact with local chemistry, and numerical tools to find structure in large spectroscopic datasets. Experiments based on the photoelectric effect can measure how electrons move around in materials and the local chemical environment those electrons encounter; the team will use and build tools that push these techniques into the realm of microscopy, allowing for study of challenging specimens synthesized in new parameter regimes. Numerical and machine learning tools will be deployed to assess spatially inhomogeneous spectra and correlate different streams of spatially resolved data.
Research Impact
The potential impacts of Dr. Vishik’s work are 1) qualify the universality of electronic behavior at high carrier density and establish which differences are important to superconductivity and which are not; 2) address the validity of long-standing assumptions about the high-carrier-density regime; and 3) make substantive connections to other unconventional superconductors, where the entire superconducting doping regime is routinely accessed experimentally.
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related links
Experimental Physics Investigators Initiative
Science
University of California, Davis Department of Physics and Astronomy
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