Revision 35 as of 2:53PM, Oct 19, 2013

Strange ARPES line shapes and ECFL

Ever since high temperature superconductors have been discovered by scientists, they have been quite baffling, to say the least. The central question is whether the standard textbook theories that we know and love already are applicable to these fascinating materials. The general sense is that those standard theories must be augmented to a great extent, if not replaced completely. Why? It is because of many puzzling experimental results that defy a proper understanding. ARPES results are among the most mysterious!

http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/research/highlights_archive/htsc.pdf

As the above advertisement says, we might be onto solving this conundrum! The main impetus came from a theoretical breakthrough (ECFL) by Shastry, which seemed to shed light on a long-standing puzzle in high temperature superconductivity in a big way—explaining anomalous ARPES line shapes. But this is not all. Follow the links below, to see how this initial model (simple ECFL) had to be modified to explain more data and to shed light on the superconductivity.

Links, students