Scanning tunneling spectroscopy of high-temperature superconductors

Abstract

Tunneling spectroscopy played a central role in the experimental verification of the microscopic theory of superconductivity in the 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/spectroscopy (STM/STS) on these compounds allowed to overcome the main difficulties. 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. We first recall the crucial efforts to gain control over the technique and to obtain reproducible results. We then discuss how the STM/STS technique has contributed to the study of some of the most unusual and remarkable properties of high-temperature superconductors: the unusual 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; 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.