Impurity-induced local magnetism and density of states in the superconducting state of YBa2Cu3O7

Phys Rev Lett. 2006 Mar 31;96(12):127005. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.127005. Epub 2006 Mar 30.

Abstract

17O NMR is used to probe the local influence of nonmagnetic Zn and magnetic Ni impurities in the superconducting state of optimally doped high TC YBa2Cu3O7. Zn and Ni induce a staggered paramagnetic polarization, similar to that evidenced above TC, with a typical extension xi=3 cell units for Zn and xi>or=3 for Ni. In addition, Zn is observed to induce a local density of states near the Fermi energy in its neighborhood, which also decays over about 3 cell units. Its magnitude decreases sharply with increasing temperature. This allows direct comparison with the STM observations done in BiSCCO.