Kazuo Kadowaki

Universal relationship of the resistivity and specific heat in heavy-Fermion compounds

It is observed that the ratio, A/γ2, has a common value of 1.0 × 10−5 μωcm (mole K/mJ)2 for all of the heavy Fermion compounds, where A is the coefficient of the quadratic term in the temperature dependence of the resistivity and γ is the coefficient of the linear term in the temperature dependence of the specific heat. This universal value, which is at least an order of magnitude above that of common d- band metals, is not accounted for by current microscopic theories and strongly indicates that a more unified understanding of the electron scattering mechanism is required for heavy Fermion materials.

Emission of Coherent THz Radiation from Superconductors

Compact solid-state sources of terahertz (THz) radiation are being sought for sensing, imaging, and spectroscopy applications across the physical and biological sciences. We demonstrate that coherent continuous-wave THz radiation of sizable power can be extracted from intrinsic Josephson junctions in the layered high-temperature superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8. In analogy to a laser cavity, the excitation of an electromagnetic cavity resonance inside the sample generates a macroscopic coherent state in which a large number of junctions are synchronized to oscillate in phase. The emission power is found to increase as the square of the number of junctions reaching values of 0.5 microwatt at frequencies up to 0.85 THz, and persists up to ∼50 kelvin. These results should stimulate the development of superconducting compact sources of THz radiation.

Evolution of the pseudogap from Fermi arcs to the nodal liquid

The pseudogap phase in the cuprates is a most unusual state of matter: it is a metal, but its Fermi surface is broken up into disconnected segments known as Fermi arcs. Using angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we show that the anisotropy of the pseudogap in momentum space and the resulting arcs depend only on the ratio T/T*(x), where T*(x) is the temperature below which the pseudogap first develops at a given hole doping x. In particular, the arcs collapse linearly with T/T* and extrapolate to zero extent as T goes to 0. This suggests that the T = 0 pseudogap state is a nodal liquid, a strange metallic state whose gapless excitations are located only at points in momentum space, just as in a d-wave superconductor.

Electronic Spectra and Their Relation to the ( π,π) Collective Mode in High- Tc Superconductors

The photoemission line shape near (pi, 0) in Bi(2)Sr(2)CaCu(2)O(8+delta) below T(c) is characterized by a sharp peak, followed at higher energy by a dip and hump. We study the evolution of this line shape as a function of momentum, temperature, and doping. We find the hump scales with the peak and persists above T(c) in the pseudogap state. We present strong evidence that the peak-dip-hump structure arises from the interaction of electrons with a collective mode of wave vector (pi, pi). The inferred mode energy and its doping dependence agree well with a magnetic resonance observed by neutron scattering.

Superconducting Gap Anisotropy and Quasiparticle Interactions: A Doping Dependent Photoemission Study

Comparing photoemission measurements on Bi2212 with penetration depth data, we show that a description of the nodal excitations of the d-wave superconducting state in terms of noninteracting quasiparticles is inadequate, and we estimate the magnitude and doping dependence of the Landau interaction parameter which renormalizes the linear T contribution to the superfluid density. Furthermore, although consistent with d-wave symmetry, the gap with underdoping cannot be fit by the simple coskx 2 cosky form, which suggests an increasing importance of long range interactions as the insulator is approached.

The origin of multiple superconducting gaps in MgB2

Magnesium diboride, MgB2, has the highest transition temperature (Tc = 39 K) of the known metallic superconductors. Whether the anomalously high Tc can be described within the conventional BCS (Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer) framework has been debated. The key to understanding superconductivity lies with the ‘superconducting energy gap’ associated with the formation of the superconducting pairs. Recently, the existence of two kinds of superconducting gaps in MgB2 has been suggested by several experiments; this is in contrast to both conventional and high-Tc superconductors. A clear demonstration of two gaps has not yet been made because the previous experiments lacked the ability to resolve the momentum of the superconducting electrons. Here we report direct experimental evidence for the two-band superconductivity in MgB2, by separately observing the superconducting gaps of the σ and π bands (as well as a surface band). The gaps have distinctly different sizes, which unambiguously establishes MgB2 as a two-gap superconductor.

Evolution of the Fermi Surface with Carrier Concentration in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ

We show, by use of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, that underdoped Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+delta appears to have a large Fermi surface centered at (pi, pi), even for samples with a T-c as low as 15 K. No clear evidence of a Fermi surface pocket around (pi/2, pi/2) has been found. These conclusions are based on a determination of the minimum gap locus in the pseudogap regime T-c < T < T*, which is found to coincide with the locus of gapless excitations in momentum space (Fermi surface) determined above T*. These results suggest that the pseudogap is more likely of precursor pairing rather than magnetic origin.

Experimental Evidence for Giant Vortex States in a Mesoscopic Superconducting Disk

The response of a mesoscopic superconducting disk to perpendicular magnetic fields is studied by using the multiple-small-tunnel-junction method, in which transport properties of several small tunnel junctions attached to the disk are measured simultaneously. This allows us to make the first experimental distinction between the giant vortex states and multivortex states. Moreover, we experimentally find a magnetic-field induced rearrangement and combination of vortices. The experimental results are well reproduced in numerical results based on the nonlinear Ginzburg-Landau theory.

Renormalization of spectral line shape and dispersion below Tc in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+delta.

Angle-resolved photoemission data in the superconducting state of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+delta show a kink in the dispersion along the zone diagonal, which is related via a Kramers-Krönig analysis to a drop in the low energy scattering rate. As one moves towards (pi,0), this kink evolves into a spectral dip. The occurrence of these anomalies in the dispersion and line shape throughout the zone indicates the presence of a new energy scale in the superconducting state.

Coherent quasiparticle weight and its connection to high-T(c) superconductivity from angle-resolved photoemission.

We study the doping and temperature dependence of the single-particle coherent weight, z(A), for high- T(c) superconductors Bi(2)Sr(2)CaCu(2)O(8+x) using angle-resolved photoemission. We find that at low temperatures the coherent weight z(A) at (pi,0) is proportional to the carrier concentration x and that the temperature dependence of z(A) is similar to that of the c-axis superfluid density. We show that, for a wide range of carrier concentration, the superconducting transition temperature scales with the product of the low-temperature coherent weight and the maximum superconducting gap.