期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:2016
卷号:113
期号:16
页码:4284-4289
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1519630113
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:Upon doping, cuprates undergo a quantum phase transition from an insulator to a d-wave superconductor. The nature of this transition and of the insulating state is vividly debated. Here, we study the Hall effect in La2-xSrxCuO4 (LSCO) samples doped near the quantum critical point at x ∼ 0.06. Dramatic fluctuations in the Hall resistance appear below TCG ∼ 1.5 K and increase as the sample is cooled down further, signaling quantum critical behavior. We explore the doping dependence of this effect in detail, by studying a combinatorial LSCO library in which the Sr content is varied in extremely fine steps, Δx ∼ 0.00008. We observe that quantum charge fluctuations wash out when superconductivity emerges but can be restored when the latter is suppressed by applying a magnetic field, showing that the two instabilities compete for the ground state.