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From Nature

Hyungje Woo1,2, Pengcheng Dai1,2, S. M. Hayden3, H. A. Mook2, T. Dahm4, D. J. Scalapino5, T. G. Perring6 and F. Doan7

Understanding the magnetic excitations in high-temperature (high-Tc) copper-oxide superconductors is important because they may mediate the electron pairing for superconductivity1, 2. By determining the wavevector (Q) and energy () dependence of the magnetic excitations, it is possible to calculate the change in the exchange energy available to the superconducting condensation energy3, 4, 5. For the high-Tc superconductor YBa2Cu3O6+x, the most prominent feature in the magnetic excitations is the resonance6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Suggestions that the resonance contributes a major part of the superconducting condensation4, 13 have not gained acceptance because the resonance is only a small portion of the total magnetic scattering12, 13, 14. Here, we report an extensive mapping of magnetic excitations for YBa2Cu3O6.95(Tc93 K). Absolute intensity measurements of the full spectra allow us to estimate the change in the magnetic exchange energy between the normal and superconducting states, which is about 15 times larger than the superconducting condensation energy15, 16—more than enough to provide the driving force for high-Tc superconductivity in YBa2Cu3O6.95.

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  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-1200, USA
  2. Center for Neutron Scattering, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA
  3. H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TL, UK
  4. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 14, D-72076 Tübingen, Germany
  5. Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA
  6. ISIS Facility, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon OX11 0QX, UK
  7. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Missouri-Rolla, Rolla, Missouri 65409-0330, USA

Correspondence to: Pengcheng Dai1,2 e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Correspondence to: H. A. Mook2 e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.