Ellipsometry and broken time-reversal symmetry in the high-temperature superconductors

1 December 1992

journal article
research article
Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review B

Vol. 46 (21) , 14078-14088
https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.46.14078

Abstract

We discuss ellipsometric experiments seeking evidence of broken time-reversal symmetry in the high-temperature copper oxide superconductors. We use both a generalized symmetry analysis, and a magnetoelectric model suggested by Dzyaloshinskii, to argue that the hypothesis that best fits the various experimental results is the scrPscrT-invariance hypothesis—which assumes broken scrT symmetry in each plane, and antiferromagnetic (alternating) order of the broken symmetry in the c direction. We suggest two experimental tests of the scrPscrT-invariant model; one of these is sufficient to rule out any other broken-symmetry state and so has the potential to be extremely useful.

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