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Title: Is the pseudogap temperature T* a thermodynamic phase transition
Plain: If the pseudogap is a true phase, crossing its boundary should leave a mark in heat capacity, as freezing does for water; no such mark has been clearly seen.
Precise: In a clean hole-doped cuprate (YBa2Cu3O6+x or HgBa2CuO4+d), determine whether the free energy is nonanalytic along T*(p): resolve a specific-heat or thermal-expansion anomaly at T* matching the symmetry breaking claimed by polarized neutron scattering, torque magnetometry and polar Kerr rotation, or bound $\Delta C/T$ below the value required by a mean-field transition with the claimed order parameter. An answer is a detected singularity with its exponent, or such a bound.
Settled by: High-resolution calorimetry or thermal expansion through $T*$ on crystals in which torque or neutron onsets are measured on the same piece.
Kind: well-posed
Answer type: yes-no
References: (empty)
Literature status: contested
Status note: Resonant ultrasound (2013) found an elastic anomaly along T*(p), and torque magnetometry (2017) and polarized neutron data indicate symmetry breaking near T*, but no calorimetric anomaly at T* has been resolved and the neutron results are disputed.
Posed since: (empty)