The pseudogap in LSCO-type high-temperature superconductors as seen by neutron crystal-field spectroscopy

We studied the isotope, pressure and doping effects on the pseudogap temperature T∗ by neutron spectroscopic experiments of the relaxation rate of crystal-field excitations in La1.96−xSrxHo0.04CuO4 (x = 0.11, 0.15, 0.20, 0.25) on the high-resolution time-of-flight spectrometer FOCUS at SINQ, PSI. We found clear evidence for the opening of a pseudogap in the underdoped regime at T∗(x = 0.11) = (82.2 ± 1.2) K as well as in the overdoped and the heavily overdoped compounds at T∗(x = 0.2) = (49.2 ± 0.7) K and at T∗(x = 0.25) = (46.5 ± 0.5) K, respectively. Furthermore, we investigated the effect of oxygen isotope substitution on the pseudogap, the experiments revealed ΔT∗(x = 0.11) = (21.3 ± 5.2) K and ΔT∗(x = 0.2) = (4.5 ± 1.3) K. The application of hydrostatic pressure (0.8 and 1.2 GPa) on the optimally doped compound (x = 0.15) results in a downward shift of dT∗/dp = (−5.9 ± 1.6) K/GPa.