Perhaps the most famous and exotic of correlated electron materials are high-temperature cuprate superconductors, which have exotic “normal” and superconducting states, neither of which are understood. Here I show our latest results on this problem, focusing not just on the pairing energy scale (the gap Δ) but also the pair-breaking energy scale Γ. In contrast to conventional superconductors in which the superconducting transition temperature Tc is set by the pairing energy alone, I show that Tc in the cuprates is set by a crossover between the pairing and pair-breaking energy scales, each of which is strongly temperature-dependent. I then discuss how this is likely related to the strong interactions present in the normal state, with many of these interactions “undressing” as the material goes superconducting.
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Perhaps the most famous and exotic of correlated electron materials are high-temperature cuprate superconductors, which have exotic “normal” and superconducting states, neither of which are understood. Here I show our latest results on this problem, focusing not just on the pairing energy scale (the gap Δ) but also the pair-breaking energy scale Γ. In contrast to conventional superconductors in which the superconducting transition temperature Tc is set by the pairing energy alone, I show that Tc in the cuprates is set by a crossover between the pairing and pair-breaking energy scales, each of which is strongly temperature-dependent. I then discuss how this is likely related to the strong interactions present in the normal state, with many of these interactions “undressing” as the material goes superconducting.