We use resonant inelastic x-ray scattering to investigate charge-stripe correlations in La1.675Eu0.2Sr0.125CuO4. By differentiating elastic from inelastic scattering, it is demonstrated that charge-stripe correlations precede both the structural low-temperature tetragonal phase and the transport-defined pseudogap onset. The scattering peak amplitude from charge stripes decays approximately as T−2 towards our detection limit. The in-plane integrated intensity, however, remains roughly temperature independent. Therefore, although the incommensurability shows a remarkably large increase at high temperature, our results are interpreted via a single scattering constituent. In fact, direct comparison to other stripe-ordered compounds (La1.875Ba0.125CuO4, La1.475Nd0.4Sr0.125CuO4 and La1.875Sr0.125CuO4) suggests a roughly constant integrated scattering intensity across all these compounds. Our results therefore provide a unifying picture for the charge-stripe ordering in La-based cuprates. As charge correlations in La1.675Eu0.2Sr0.125CuO4 extend beyond the low-temperature tetragonal and pseudogap phase, their emergence heralds a spontaneous symmetry breaking in this compound.
@article{arxiv.1912.00194,
title = {High-Temperature Charge-Stripe Correlations in La$_{1.675}$Eu$_{0.2}$Sr$_{0.125}$CuO$_4$},
author = {Qisi Wang and M. Horio and K. von Arx and Y. Shen and D. John Mukkattukavil and Y. Sassa and O. Ivashko and C. E. Matt and S. Pyon and T. Takayama and H. Takagi and T. Kurosawa and N. Momono and M. Oda and T. Adachi and S. M. Haidar and Y. Koike and Y. Tseng and W. Zhang and J. Zhao and K. Kummer and M. Garcia-Fernandez and Ke-Jin Zhou and N. B. Christensen and H. M. Rønnow and T. Schmitt and J. Chang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.00194},
year = {2020}
}