Jiang Ruoshi, Hou Jinning, Fan Zhiyu, Lang Zi-Jian, Ku Wei
Tsung-Dao Lee Institute & School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
Key Laboratory of Artificial Structures and Quantum Control (Ministry of Education), Shanghai 200240, China.
Phys Rev Lett. 2024 Mar 22;132(12):126503. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.126503.
Beyond 14 GPa of pressure, bilayered La_{3}Ni_{2}O_{7} was recently found to develop strong superconductivity above the liquid nitrogen boiling temperature. An immediate essential question is the pressure-induced qualitative change of electronic structure that enables the exciting high-temperature superconductivity. We investigate this timely question via a numerical multiscale derivation of effective many-body physics. At the atomic scale, we first clarify that the system has a strong charge transfer nature with itinerant carriers residing mainly in the in-plane oxygen between spin-1 Ni^{2+} ions. We then elucidate in electron-volt scale and sub-electron-volt scale the key physical effect of the applied pressure: it induces a cupratelike electronic structure via fractionalizing the Ni ionic spin from 1 to 1/2. This suggests a high-temperature superconductivity in La_{3}Ni_{2}O_{7} with microscopic mechanism and (d-wave) symmetry similar to that in the cuprates.