Little-Parks like oscillations in lightly doped cuprate superconductors

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 13; no. 1; p. 1316
• Main Authors: Liao, Menghan, Zhu, Yuying, Hu, Shuxu, Zhong, Ruidan, Schneeloch, John, Gu, Genda, Zhang, Ding, Xue, Qi-Kun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Nature Publishing Group 14.03.2022; Nature Publishing Group UK; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: Bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide; Charge density waves; CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY; Cuprates; High temperature; Magnetic fields; Oscillations; Parks; Superconductivity; Superconductors
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-28954-w

Understanding the rich and competing electronic orders in cuprate superconductors may provide important insight into the mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity. Here, by measuring Bi Sr CaCu O in the extremely underdoped regime, we obtain evidence for a distinct type of ordering, which manifests itself as resistance oscillations at low magnetic fields (≤10 T) and at temperatures around the superconducting transition. By tuning the doping level p continuously, we reveal that these low-field oscillations occur only when p < 0.1. The oscillation amplitude increases with decreasing p but the oscillation period stays almost constant. We show that these low-field oscillations can be well described by assuming a periodic superconducting structure with a mesh size of about 50 nm. Such a charge order, which is distinctly different from the well-established charge density wave and pair density wave, seems to be an unexpected piece of the puzzle on the correlated physics in cuprates.