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The currently established electronic phase diagram of cuprates is based on a study of single- and double-layered compounds. These CuO$_2$ planes, however, are directly contacted with dopant layers, thus inevitably disordered with an inhomogeneous electronic state. Here, we solve this issue by investigating a 6-layered Ba$_2$Ca$_5$Cu$_6$O$_{12}$(F,O)$_2$ with inner CuO$_2$ layers, which are clean with the extremely low disorder, by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and quantum oscillation measurements. We find a tiny Fermi pocket with a doping level less than 1% to exhibit well-defined quasiparticle peaks which surprisingly lack the polaronic feature. This provides the first evidence that the slightest amount of carriers is enough to turn a Mott insulating state into a metallic state with long-lived quasiparticles. By tuning hole carriers, we also find an unexpected phase transition from the superconducting to metallic states at 4%. Our results are distinct from the nodal liquid state with polaronic features proposed as an anomaly of the heavily underdoped cuprates.

The superconductivity of high transition temperature (Tc) occurs in copper oxides with carrier-doping to an antiferromagnetic (AF) Mott insulator. This discovery more than thirty years ago immediately led to a prediction about the formation of a small Fermi pocket. This structure, however, has not yet been detected, while it could be a key element in relating high-Tc superconductivity to Mott physics. To address this long-standing issue, we investigate the electronic structure of a five-layered Ba2Ca4Cu5O10(F,O)2 with inner CuO2 planes demonstrated to be cleanest ever in cuprates. Most surprisingly, we find small Fermi surface (FS) pockets closed around (pi/2,pi/2) consistently by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and quantum oscillation measurements. The d-wave superconducting gap opens along the pocket, revealing the coexistence between the superconductivity and AF order in the same CuO2 sheet. Our data further indicate that the superconductivity can occur without contribution from the states near the antinodal region, which are shared by other competing excitations such as the charge density wave (CDW) and pseudogap states. This will have significant implications for understanding the superconductivity and puzzling Fermi arc phenomena in cuprates.

Scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS) measurements were carried out on a multi-layered cuprate superconductor Ba$_2$Ca$_5$Cu$_6$O$_{12}$(O$_{1-x}$,F$_x$)$_2$. STM topography revealed random spot structures with the characteristic length $\le 0.5$ nm. The conductance spectra dI/dV(V) show the coexistence of smaller gaps $\Delta_S$ and large gaps (pseudogaps) $\Delta_L$. The pseudogap-related features in the superconducting state were traced with the spatial resolution of $\sim$ 0.07 nm. Here, $I$ and $V$ are the tunnel current and bias voltage, respectively. The temperature, $T$, dependence of $\Delta_S$ follows the reduced Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) dependence. The hallmark ratio 2$\Delta_{S}(T=0)/k_B T_c$ equals to 4.9, which is smaller than those of other cuprate superconductors. Here, $T_c$ is the superconducting critical temperature and $k_B$ is the Boltzmann constant. The larger gap $\Delta_L$ survives in the normal state and even increases with $T$ above $T_c$. The $T$ dependences of the spatial distributions for both relevant gaps ($\Delta$ map), as well as for each gap separately ($\Delta_S$ and $\Delta_L$) were obtained. From the histogram of $\Delta$ map, the averaged gap values were found to be $\bar \Delta_S = \sim 24$ meV and $\bar \Delta_L = \sim 79$ meV. The smaller gap $\Delta_S$ shows a spatially homogeneous distribution while the larger gap $\Delta_L$ is quite inhomogeneous, indicating that rather homogeneous superconductivity coexists with the patchy distributed pseudogap. The spatial variation length $\xi_{\Delta_L}$ of $\Delta_L$ correlates with the scale of the topography spot structures, being approximately 0.4 nm. This value is considerably smaller than the coherence length of this class of superconductors, suggesting that $\Delta_L$ is strongly affected by the disorder of the apical O/F., Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures

We report $^{63}$Cu- and $^{205}$Tl-NMR studies on six-layered ($n$=6) high-$T_c$ superconducting (SC) cuprate TlBa$_2$Ca$_5$Cu$_6$O$_{14+\delta}$ (Tl1256) with $T_c\sim$100 K, which reveal that antiferromagnetic (AFM) order takes place below $T_{\rm N}\sim$170 K. In this compound, four underdoped inner CuO$_2$ planes ($n$(IP)=4) sandwiched by two outer planes (OPs) are responsible for the onset of AFM order, whereas the nearly optimally-doped OPs responsible for the onset of bulk SC. It is pointed out that an increase in the out-of-plane magnetic interaction within an intra-unit-cell causes $T_{\rm N}\sim$ 45 K for Tl1245 with $n$(IP)=3 to increase to $\sim$170 K for Tl1256 with $n$(IP)=4. It is remarkable that the marked increase in $T_{\rm N}$ and the AFM moments for the IPs does not bring about any reduction in $T_c$, since $T_c\sim 100$ K is maintained for both compounds with nearly optimally doped OP. We highlight the fact that the SC order for $n\ge5$ is mostly dominated by the long-range in-plane SC correlation even in the multilayered structure, which is insensitive to the magnitude of $T_{\rm N}$ and the AFM moments at the IPs or the AFM interaction among the IPs. These results demonstrate a novel interplay between the SC and AFM orders when the charge imbalance between the IPs and OP is significantly large., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Accepted for publication in J. Phys. Soc. Jpn

Here we demonstrate the technique to stabilize the ErFeAsO-based superconductor with the smallest lattice constants in LnFeAsO1-y (Ln = lanthanide) series using hydrogen doping method. Polycrystalline samples were synthesized by heating pellets with nominal compositions of ErFeAsO1-y (1-y = 0.75 ~ 0.95) sandwiched between pellets of LaFeAsO0.8H0.8 compositions at 1100 {\deg}C under a pressure of 5.0 - 5.5 GP. The sample with lattice constants of a = 3.8219 {\AA} and c = 8.2807 {\AA} shows the highest superconducting critical temperatures (Tc) of 44.5 K and 41.0 K determined by onset transitions of resistivity and susceptibility, respectively. We discuss phase diagram of Ln dependence of Tc in LnFeAsO-based superconductors., Comment: 12 Pages, 5 Figures, Accepted for publication in EPL

We report on superconducting(SC) characteristics for oxygen-reduced Cu-based five-layered high-temperature superconductor (Cu,C)Ba2Ca4Cu5Oy(Cu-1245(OPT)), which includes five-fold outer planes (OP) and four-fold inner planes (IP).As a result of the reduction of the carrier density, the bulk SC for Cu-1245 (OPT) takes place at the nearly optimally-doped OP with Tc= 98 K that is different from previously-reported Cu-1245(OVD) where IP plays a primary role for the onset of SC. It gives an evidence that the carrier density of the optimally-doped layer determines its bulk Tc.Static antiferromagnetic(AFM) order is evidenced at IP's by zero-field Cu-NMR at low temperature, irrespective of the SC transition at OP's below 98K. This AFM state at IP's is characterized by a carrier localization at low temperatures due to disorder effect, whereas the carrier densities in each layer are similar to Hg-1245(OPT) where the AFM metallic state are realized in IP's. This finding reinforces the phase diagram in which the AFM metallic phase exists between AFM insulator and SC states for the case of ideally-flat CuO2 plane without disorder., Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures