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Science 11 April 2008:
Vol. 320. no. 5873, pp. 196 - 201
DOI: 10.1126/science.1154700
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Research Articles

Electronic Origin of the Inhomogeneous Pairing Interaction in the High-Tc Superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+{delta}

Abhay N. Pasupathy,1* Aakash Pushp,1,2* Kenjiro K. Gomes,1,2* Colin V. Parker,1 Jinsheng Wen,3 Zhijun Xu,3 Genda Gu,3 Shimpei Ono,4 Yoichi Ando,5 Ali Yazdani1{dagger}

Identifying the mechanism of superconductivity in the high-temperature cuprate superconductors is one of the major outstanding problems in physics. We report local measurements of the onset of superconducting pairing in the high–transition temperature (Tc) superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+{delta} using a lattice-tracking spectroscopy technique with a scanning tunneling microscope. We can determine the temperature dependence of the pairing energy gaps, the electronic excitations in the absence of pairing, and the effect of the local coupling of electrons to bosonic excitations. Our measurements reveal that the strength of pairing is determined by the unusual electronic excitations of the normal state, suggesting that strong electron-electron interactions rather than low-energy (<0.1 volts) electron-boson interactions are responsible for superconductivity in the cuprates.

1 Joseph Henry Laboratories and Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
2 Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
3 Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science, Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY 11973, USA.
4 Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry, Komae, Tokyo 201-8511, Japan.
5 Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research, Osaka University, Ibaraki, Osaka 567-0047, Japan.

* These authors contributed equally to this work.

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: yazdani{at}princeton.edu

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Extending Universal Nodal Excitations Optimizes Superconductivity in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+{delta}.
A. Pushp, C. V. Parker, A. N. Pasupathy, K. K. Gomes, S. Ono, J. Wen, Z. Xu, G. Gu, and A. Yazdani (2009)
Science 324, 1689-1693
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