Fermi liquid behavior of the in-plane resistivity in the pseudogap state of YBa 2 Cu 4 O 8

Significance High-temperature superconductivity evolves out of a metallic state that undergoes profound changes as a function of carrier concentration, changes that are often obscured by the high upper critical fields. In the more disordered cuprate families, field suppression of superconductivity has uncovered an underlying ground state that exhibits unusual localization behavior. Here, we reveal that, in stoichiometric YBa 2 Cu 4 O 8 , the field-induced ground state is both metallic and Fermi liquid-like. The manuscript also demonstrates the potential for using the absolute magnitude of the electrical resistivity to constrain the Fermi surface topology of correlated metals and, in the case of YBa 2 Cu 4 O 8 , reveals that the current picture of the reconstructed Fermi surface in underdoped cuprates as a single, isotropic electron-like pocket may be incomplete.