Unconventional Transition from Metallic to Insulating Resistivity in the Spin-ladder Compound (Sr,Ca)$_{14}$Cu$_{24}$O$_{41}$

Abstract

Spin-ladder compounds make interesting analogs of the high-temperature superconductors, because they contain layers of nearly one-dimensional "ladders" consisting of a square array of copper and oxygen atoms. Increasing the number of legs in the ladders provides a step-wise approach toward the two-dimensional copper-oxygen plane, that structure believed to be a key to high temperature superconductivity. Short-range spin correlations in ladders have been predicted to lead to formation of hole pairs favorable for superconductivity, once enough holes are introduced onto the ladders by doping. Indeed, superconductivity has been discovered in the two-leg ladder compound (Sr,Ca)$_{14}$Cu$_{24}$O$_{41}$ under high pressure. Here we show that charge transport in the non-superconducting state of (Sr,Ca)$_{14}$Cu$_{24}$O$_{41}$ shares three distinct regimes in common with high-temperature superconductors, including an unexplained insulating behavior at low temperatures in which the resistivity increases as the logarithm of the temperature. These observations suggest that the logarithmic divergence arises from a new localization mechanism common to the ladder compounds and the high-temperature superconductors, which may arise from nearly one-dimensional charge transport in the presence of a spin gap.