How pressure enhances the critical temperature of superconductivity in YBa(2)Cu(3)O(6+y)

High-temperature superconducting cuprates respond to doping with a dome-like dependence of their critical temperature (T(c)). But the family-specific maximum T(c) can be surpassed by application of pressure, a compelling observation known for decades. We investigate the phenomenon with high-pressure anvil cell NMR and measure the charge content at planar Cu and O, and with it the doping of the ubiquitous CuO(2) plane with atomic-scale resolution. We find that pressure increases the overall hole doping, as widely assumed, but when it enhances T(c) above what can be achieved by doping, pressure leads to a hole redistribution favoring planar O. This is similar to the observation that the family-specific maximum T(c) is higher for materials where the hole content at planar O is higher at the expense of that at planar Cu. The latter reflects dependence of the maximum T(c) on the Cu–O bond covalence and the charge-transfer gap. The results presented here indicate that the pressure-induced enhancement of the maximum T(c) points to the same mechanism.