Field-induced quantum critical route to a Fermi liquid in high-temperature superconductors

Abstract

In high-transition-temperature (Tc) superconductivity, charge doping is a natural tuning parameter that takes copper oxides from the antiferromagnet to the superconducting region. In the metallic state above Tc, the standard Landau's Fermi-liquid theory of metals as typified by the temperature squared (T2) dependence of resistivity appears to break down. Whether the origin of the non-Fermiliquid behavior is related to physics specific to the cuprates is a fundamental question still under debate. We uncover a transformation from the non-Fermi-liquid state to a standard Fermi-liquid state driven not by doping but by magnetic field in the overdoped high-Tc superconductor Tl2Ba2CuO6+x. From the c-axis resistivity measured up to 45 T, we show that the Fermi-liquid features appear above a sufficiently high field that decreases linearly with temperature and lands at a quantum critical point near the superconductivity's upper critical field - with the Fermi-liquid coefficient of the T2 dependence showing a power-law diverging behavior on the approach to the critical point. This field-induced quantum criticality bears a striking resemblance to that in quasi-two-dimensional heavy-Fermion superconductors, suggesting a common underlying spin-related physics in these superconductors with strong electron correlations. © 2008 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA.