Elucidation of the origins of HTSC transport behaviour and quantum oscillations

Abstract

A detailed exposition is made of recent transport and 'quantum oscillation' results from HTSC systems covering the full range from overdoped to underdoped material. This now very extensive and high quality data set is interpreted here within the framework developed by the author of local pairs and boson-fermion resonance, arising in the context of negative-U behaviour in an inhomogeneous electronic environment. The strong inhomogeneity comes with the mixed-valent condition of these materials, which when underdoped lie in close proximity to the Mott-Anderson transition. The observed intense scattering is presented as resulting from pair formation and electron-boson collisions in the resonant crossover circumstance. The high level of scattering brings the systems to incoherence in the pseudogapped state, p < pc (= 0.183). In a high magnetic field the striped partition of the inhomogeneous charge distribution is much strengthened and regularized. Magnetization and resistance oscillations, of period dictated by the favoured positioning of the square fluxon array within the real space environment of the diagonal 2D charge striping array, are demonstrated to be responsible for the recently reported behaviour hitherto widely attributed to the quantum oscillation response of a much more standard Fermi liquid condition. A detailed analysis embracing all the experimental data serves to indicate that in the given conditions of very high field, low temperature, 2D-striped, underdoped, d-wave superconducting, HTSC material the flux quantum becomes doubled to h/e.