Gapped Collective Charge Excitations and Interlayer Hopping in Cuprate Superconductors

We use resonant inelastic x-ray scattering to probe the propagation of plasmons in the electron-doped cuprate superconductor Sr0.9La0.1CuO2. We detect a plasmon gap of ~120 meV at the two-dimensional Brillouin zone center, indicating that low-energy plasmons in Sr0.9La0.1CuO2 are not strictly acoustic. The plasmon dispersion, including the gap, is accurately captured by layered t-J-V model calculations. A similar analysis performed on recent resonant inelastic x-ray scattering data from other cuprates suggests that the plasmon gap is generic and its size is related to the magnitude of the interlayer hopping tz. Our work signifies the three dimensionality of the charge dynamics in layered cuprates and provides a new method to determine tz.