Isotope effect in the pseudogap of high-temperature superconducting copper oxides

Abstract

We study cuprates within Dynamical Cluster Approximation and find the pseudogap displays an isotope effect of the same sign as observed experimentally. Notwithstanding the non-phononic origin of the pseudogap the interplay between electronic repulsion and retarded phonon-mediated attraction gives rise to an isotope dependence of the antinodal spectra. Due to the strong momentum differentiation, such interplay is highly non-trivial and leads to the simultaneous presence of heavier quasiparticles along the nodal direction. We predict an isotope effect in electron-doped materials.