Title: Inter-site pair superconductivity: origins and recent validation experiments,
Abstract: The challenge of understanding high-temperature superconductivity has led to
a plethora of ideas, but 30 years after its discovery in cuprates, very few
have achieved convincing experimental validation. While Hubbard and t-J models
were given a lot of attention, a number of recent experiments appear to give
decisive support to the model of real-space inter-site pairing and percolative
superconductivity in cuprates. Systematic measurements of the doping dependence
of the superfluid density show a linear dependence on superfluid density -
rather than doping - over the entire phase diagram, in accordance with the
model's predictions. The doping-dependence of the anomalous lattice dynamics of
in-plane Cu-O mode vibrations observed by inelastic neutron scattering, gives
remarkable reciprocal space signature of the inter-site pairing interaction
whose doping dependence closely follows the predicted pair density.
Symmetry-specific time-domain spectroscopy shows carrier localization, polaron
formation, pairing and superconductivity to be distinct processes occurring on
distinct timescales throughout the entire superconducting phase diagram. The
three diverse experimental results confirm non-trivial predictions made more
than a decade ago by the inter-site pairing model in the cuprates, remarkably
also confirming some of the fundamental notions mentioned in the seminal paper
on the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in cuprates.