Tuning high-Tc cuprate electronic structure with light and magnetic elements

High temperature superconductor Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O₈ (Bi2212) is intrinsically highly anisotropic, and mechanical expoliation proved that most superconducting physics lies within a half unit cell. Oxygenation and deoxygenation are the overwhelmingly used methods to tune superconductivity and the associated electronic structures in this system. In recent years, coupled pairing or depairing channels, including small-q phonon [1] and antiferromagnetic fluctuations [2], became an active area to investigate the mechanism and tune Tc. We show photoemission resutls on Bi-2212 modified with light element Li and magnetic element Pr sandwiched right between CuO₂ bilayers, where the bilayer splitting, the B1g buckling phonon, and the antiferromagnetic correlations are directly manipulated. We discuss the implications for the pairing mechanism, and potential multimodal investigations directly in the bosonic channel. [1] He, Hashimoto et al., Science 362, 62 (2018); [2] Dahm and Scalapino, Phys. Rev. B 97, 184504 (2018)