Charge carriers of different origin in cuprates as revealed by experiment.pdf

a r X i v : c o n d - m a t / 0 6 0 7 0 1 0 v 1 [ c o n d - m a t .s u p r - c o n ] 1 J u l 2 0 0 6 Charge carriers of different origin in cuprates as revealed by experiment Lev P. Gor’kov NHMFL, Florida State University, 1800 E P.Dirac Dr., Tallahassee FL 32310, USA and L.D.Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics of the RAS, Chernogolovka 142432, RUSSIA Gregory B. Teitel’baum? E.K.Zavoiskii Institute for Technical Physics of the RAS, Kazan 420029, RUSSIA (Dated: February 6, 2008) The Hall coefficient data for cuprates show that number of carriers exceeds external doping x at higher x and varies with temperature. Hence, spins on the Cu-sites are not conserved. Activation energy for thermally excited carriers equals the energy between the Fermi surface “arc” and the band bottom near the van Hove singularities. Crossover from marginal Fermi liquid- to pseudogap- regime happens at temperatures at which number of activated carriers gets comparable with the number of externally doped holes. Implications for the (T, x)-phase diagram of cuprates are discussed. The unifying feature for all cuprates is the presence of one or more CuO2 –planes. The consensus is that the in-plane electronic constituents, namely, the Cu d9 levels and the oxygen p-orbitals determine all cuprates’ physics [1, 2]. Even this simplified model turns out to be difficult for complete theoretical analysis, and properties of cuprates remain far from being understood. Below, from the experimental stand-point, we address mainly properties of the single-plane cuprates, La2?xSrxCuO4 (LSCO), the materials best studied by now. Transition from the Mott insulating state into a metal- lic and superconducting (SC) state is driven in cuprates by external doping. We emphasize from the very begin- ning that doping, rigorously speaking, is not the thermo- dynamic path for Metal-Insulator (MI) transition. It is often assumed that initially holes go onto the oxy- gen sites, since the Cu(d9)- and the oxygen’s l