Condensed Matter and Materials Physics(DCMMP)
Physique de la matière condensée et des matériaux (DPMCM)
Marcel FRANZ
University of British Columbia
Nodal Protectorate in Underdoped Cuprates
Amidst the complexity characterizing the behavior of the high temperature cuprate superconductors several features have recently emerged that appear universal (or nearly so) across all families of materials. One such feature is the d-wave symmetry of the superconducting order parameter and the associated "nodal protectorate" of coherent low-energy quasiparticle excitations that appear to persist down to strongly underdoped and perhaps even non-superconducting regions of the phase diagram. In this talk I will outline some general ramifications of this physical picture and discuss constraints that it imposes on the candidate microscopic theories of cuprate superconductors.