Although all superconducting cuprates display charge-ordering tendencies, their low-temperature properties are distinct, impeding efforts to understand the phenomena within a single conceptual framework. While some systems exhibit stripes of charge and spin, with a locked periodicity, others host charge density waves (CDWs) without any obviously related spin order. Here we use resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) to follow the evolution of charge correlations in the canonical stripe ordered cuprate La1.875Ba0.125CuO4 (LBCO~1/8) across its ordering transition. We find that high-temperature charge correlations are unlocked from the wavevector of the spin correlations, signaling analogies to CDW phases in various other cuprates. This indicates that stripe order at low temperatures is stabilized by the coupling of otherwise independent charge and spin density waves, with important implications for the relation between charge and spin correlations in the cuprates.
@article{arxiv.1701.00022,
title = {High-temperature charge density wave correlations in La$_{1.875}$Ba$_{0.125}$CuO$_{4}$ without spin-charge locking},
author = {H. Miao and J. Lorenzana and G. Seibold and Y. Y. Peng and A. Amorese and F. Yakhou-Harris and K. Kummer and N. B. Brookes and R. M. Konik and V. Thampy and G. D. Gu and G. Ghiringhelli and L. Braicovich and M. P. M. Dean},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1701.00022},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
Accepted in Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences; 8 pages, 4 figures