Thermal fluctuations and inhomogeneous superconductivity in overdoped cuprates

Author: Atkinson, Bill

Affiliation: Trent University

Type: Poster

Display Dates: 20.07.2026 - 21.07.2026

Board: MT-118

This poster is based on Sulangi et al, Phys. Rev. Res. 7, 043201 (2025). Cuprate high temperature superconductors are widely believed to be free from strong-correlation physics in the overdoped limit, where they should fall within the Landau-BCS paradigm. However, various experimental observations appear incompatible with this belief: the superfluid density in La2-xSrxCuO4 thin films is proportional to Tc, rather than electron density; scanning tunneling spectroscopy experiments on Bi2Sr2CuO6+d find evidence for a two-gap structure like that in underdoped cuprates; transport and photoemission experiments see evidence for superconducting fluctuations well above Tc; and tunneling experiments find strong nanoscale inhomogeneities---with the spectral gap in the superconducting state varying by a factor of 2 or more on nanometer length scales---in several materials. We propose that the primary source of inhomogeneity is a pairing interaction that fluctuates by an order of magnitude over nanometer distances, and show that a model built on this assumption reproduces the two-gap spectrum with a spatially uniform subgap and an inhomogneous large gap that is seen in tunneling experiments.