Spin singlet and quasiparticle excitations in cuprate superconductors

We followed step by step the transition from an antiferromagnetic (AF) Mott insulator to a superconducting (SC) metal in the Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8+ δ (Bi-2212) cuprate using the electronic Raman scattering spectroscopy. This was achieved by tracking the doping dependence of the spin singlet excitation originate from the AF Mott insulator, the normal state quasiparticles excitation related to the mobile charge carriers and the Bogoliubov quasiparticles related to the SC gap. We show that the signature of the pseudogap phase which develops during this transition, can be interpreted as the blocking of charge carriers by the enhancement of the antiferromagnetic correlations as the temperature drops. We find that the energy scale of the pseudogap, ∆ pg ( p ), closely follows the one of the spin singlet excitation, ∆ sse ( p ), with doping p . The quasiparticles lifetime considerably increases with doping when the pseudogap collapses. We reveal that the maximum amplitude of the SC gap, ∆ maxsc and the SC transition temperature T c are linked in an extended range of doping such as ∆ max sc ( p ) ∝ ∆ sse ( p ) T c ( p ). This relation suggests that the AF correlations play a key role in the mechanism of superconductivity.