Schedule Oct 24, 2007
The Question of Pairing Glue in the Cuprate Superconductors
Doug Scalapino, UCSB, Physics

While there is a growing consensus that the pairing interaction in the cuprates arises from short range Coulomb interactions between electrons, the precise nature of the pairing interaction remains controversial. This is the case even among those that agree that the Hubbard and t-J models contain the essential physics of the problem. Central to this controversy is the question of whether there is a "pairing glue" . This is a question regarding the dynamics of the pairing interaction. If the pairing interaction arises from the exchange of spin-fluctuations, its dynamics will reflect the frequency spectrum associated with inelastic magnetic neutron scattering. This frequency scale is small compared with U or the bare bandwidth and one speaks of a retarded, spin-fluctuation mediated "pairing glue". Alternatively, in the RVB approach, as noted by P.W.Anderson, the exchange coupling J, which attracts electrons of opposite spins on neighboring sites is the result of states of very high energy. In this case, the corresponding interaction has only high-frequency dynamics, so it is unrelated to a "glue". In this talk, we will discuss what numerical calculations tell us about the dynamics of the pairing interaction in the Hubbard and t-J models and review what is presently being seen experimentally.

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