Atomic-Scale Sources and Mechanism of Nanoscale Electronic Disorder in Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8+δ

• DOI: 10.1126/science.1113095
• Publication Date: 2005-08-12T02:24:18Z
• Authors: K. McElroy; Jinho Lee; J. A. Slezak; D.-H. Lee; H. Eisaki; S. Uchida; J. C. Davis
• Keywords: 0303 health sciences; 03 medical and health sciences

The randomness of dopant atom distributions in cuprate high–critical temperature superconductors has long been suspected to cause nanoscale electronic disorder. In the superconductor Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8+δ , we identified populations of atomic-scale impurity states whose spatial densities follow closely those of the oxygen dopant atoms. We found that the impurity-state locations are strongly correlated with all manifestations of the nanoscale electronic disorder. This disorder occurs via an unanticipated mechanism exhibiting high-energy spectral weight shifts, with associated strong superconducting coherence peak suppression but very weak scattering of low-energy quasi-particles.