Scanning tunneling spectroscopy of high-temperature superconductors

TLDR

Tunneling spectroscopy confirmed the microscopic theory of superconductivity in conventional materials, but its application to high‑temperature superconductors was initially hindered by material complexity; the advent of STM/STS overcame these obstacles and sparked widespread use in the field. The paper reviews experimental highlights from the past decade in high‑temperature superconductor studies using STM/STS. The review first recalls the key efforts that enabled precise control and reproducible STM/STS measurements on high‑temperature superconductors. STM/STS has revealed unusually large superconducting gaps that do not scale with Tc, a pseudogap intimately linked to superconductivity, exceptionally small vortex cores that affect vortex matter, unexpected electronic states within cores, and periodic local density‑of‑states modulations in both superconducting and pseudogap regimes.

Abstract

Tunneling spectroscopy has played a central role in the experimental verification of the microscopic theory of superconductivity in classical superconductors. Initial attempts to apply the same approach to high-temperature superconductors were hampered by various problems related to the complexity of these materials. The use of scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy (STM and STS) on these compounds allowed the main difficulties to be overcome. This success motivated a rapidly growing scientific community to apply this technique to high-temperature superconductors. This paper reviews the experimental highlights obtained over the last decade. The crucial efforts to gain control over the technique and to obtain reproducible results are first recalled. Then a discussion on how the STM and STS techniques have contributed to the study of some of the most unusual and remarkable properties of high-temperature superconductors is presented: the unusually large gap values and the absence of scaling with the critical temperature, the pseudogap and its relation to superconductivity, the unprecedented small size of the vortex cores and its influence on vortex matter, the unexpected electronic properties of the vortex cores, and the combination of atomic resolution and spectroscopy leading to the observation of periodic local density of states modulations in the superconducting and pseudogap states and in the vortex cores.