Giant enhancement of the thermal Hall conductivity kappa(xy) in the superconductor YBa(2)Cu(3)O(7)

Phys Rev Lett. 2001 Jan 29;86(5):890-3. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.890.

Abstract

In high-purity YBa(2)Cu(3)O(7), the (weak-field) thermal Hall conductivity kappa(xy) is observed to increase a thousand-fold between 90 and 30 K. The inferred quasiparticle lifetime tau increases a hundred-fold starting below 90 K, in disagreement with a recent photoemission experiment. We show that kappa(xy) exhibits a specific scaling behavior below approximately 30 K. This scaling may bear on the issue of whether Landau quantization of the quasiparticle states occurs.