Starfish-shaped Cooper pairs with ultrashort antinodal length scales across all doping levels in cuprate superconductors.

We access the fully causal electronic self-energy utilizing a brand new 2-dimensional method of ARPES analysis [1], which removes the critical limitations of the previous one-dimensional MDC (Momentum Distribution Curve) and EDC (Energy Distribution Curve) methods. This new method, which utilizes orders-of-magnitude fewer parameters than the MDC and EDC methods, brings in the energy, momentum, and temperature -dependence of the self energies and is fully consistent with the already-successful studies showing the gap filling-in behavior [2,3]. The full set of parameters we access allows us to make the first direct measurements of the shape and size of the pairs [4]. This is all critical information for explaining how coherence between the pairs (the superconducting state) evolves as a function of doping and temperature.

1. H Li, Xiaoqing Zhou, Stephen Parham, Theodore J. Reber, Helmuth Berger, Gerald Arnold, Daniel S. Desssau, “Coherent organization of electronic correlations as a mechanism to enhance and stabilize high temperature cuprate superconductivity” (Nature Communications 9, 26 (2018)

2. T. J. Reber, N. C. Plumb, Z. Sun, Y. Cao, Q. Wang, K. McElroy, H. Iwasawa, M. Arita, J. S. Wen, Z. J. Xu, G. Gu, Y. Yoshida, H. Eisaki, Y. Aiura, and D. S. Dessau The Non-Quasiparticle Nature of Fermi Arcs in Cuprate High-T_C Superconductors Nature Physics 8, 606–610 (2012)

3. T. J. Reber, N. C. Plumb, Y. Cao, Z. Sun, Q. Wang, K.E. McElroy, H. Iwasawa, M. Arita, J.S. Wen, Z.J. Xu, G. Gu, Y. Yoshida, H. Eisaki, Y. Aiura, and D. S. Dessau Prepairing and the “filling” gap in the cuprates from the tomographic density of states Phys. Rev. B 87, 060506 (2013).

4. Haoxiang Li, Xiaoqing Zhou, Stephen Parham, Kyle N. Gordon, R. D. Zhong, J. Schneeloch, G. D. Gu, Y. Huang, H. Berger, G. B. Arnold, D. S. Dessau Starfish-shaped Cooper pairs with ultrashort antinodal length scales in cuprate superconductors. ( arXiv:1809.02194)