Visualising the charge and cooper-pair density waves in cuprates : doctoral thesis accepted by the University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland, UK

This thesis reports on the use of scanning tunnelling microscopy to elucidate the atomic-scale electronic structure of a charge density wave, revealing that it has a d-symmetry form factor, hitherto unobserved in nature. It then details the development of an entirely new class of scanned probe: the scanning Josephson tunnelling microscope. This scans the Josephson junction formed between a cuprate superconducting microscope tip and the surface of a cuprate sample, thereby imaging the superfluid density of the sample with nanometer resolution. This novel method is used to establish the existence of a spatially modulated superconducting condensate, something postulated theoretically over half a century ago but never previously observed. Front Matter ....Pages i-xvi Introduction to Unconventional Superconductivity and Density Waves in Cuprates (Stephen Edkins)....Pages 1-22 Spectroscopic-Imaging STM (SI-STM) (Stephen Edkins)....Pages 23-49 Sub-lattice Segregated SI-STM in Cuprates (Stephen Edkins)....Pages 51-58 Atomic-Scale Electronic Structure of the Cuprate d-Symmetry Form Factor Charge Density Wave (Stephen Edkins)....Pages 59-88 The Scanned Josephson Tunnelling Microscope (Stephen Edkins)....Pages 89-125 Pair Density Waves in Cuprates (Stephen Edkins)....Pages 127-148 Detection of a Cooper-Pair Density Wave in Bi\(_2\)Sr\(_2\)CaCu\(_2\)O\(_{8+\delta }\) (Stephen Edkins)....Pages 149-155 Summary and Future Directions (Stephen Edkins)....Pages 157-160 Back Matter ....Pages 161-187