Orders and disorder in high-Tc superconductors

Abstract

Since its first discovery in 1986, high-Tc superconductors have been attracting constant interests and meticulous efforts from both theorists and experimentalists, not merely due to its large transition temperature, but also because it offers a well characterized laboratory for the study of exotic phenomena such as quantum criticality, non-Fermi liquid behavior, and intertwined orders. One pressing question in the field is the role played by disorder:

inevitable in real materials, disorder is able to fundamentally alter the properties of the system under certain circumstances. In this talk, we will discuss from a theoretical point of view, how different types of disorders affect various electronic orders in copper-based high-Tc superconductors. We also discuss the implications in experiments, and investigate the possibility of generalizing our conclusions to a variety of other physical systems.