Fluctuating stripes at the onset of the pseudogap in the high-Tc superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x

• Published in: Nature (London) Vol. 468; no. 7324; pp. 677 - 680
• Main Authors: Parker, Colin V., Aynajian, Pegor, da Silva Neto, Eduardo H., Pushp, Aakash, Ono, Shimpei, Wen, Jinsheng, Xu, Zhijun, Gu, Genda, Yazdani, Ali
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 02.12.2010; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 639/301/930/328/968; 639/766/119/1003; Condensed matter: electronic structure, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties; Electronic structure; Exact sciences and technology; Fluctuations (noise, chaos, nonequilibrium superconductivity, localization, etc.); Humanities and Social Sciences; letter; multidisciplinary; Physics; Properties of type I and type II superconductors; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Superconductivity; Scanning tunneling microscopy; Energy gap; Phase diagrams; Fluctuations; Electronic structure; Hole density; Modulation; Doping; Interference; High-Tc superconductors; Density functional method; Bismuth Calcium Copper Strontium Oxides Mixed
• ISSN: 0028-0836; 1476-4687
• DOI: 10.1038/nature09597

Fluctuating stripes and pseudogap onset A long-standing question in the superconductor field is the nature of the interplay between the pseudogap, which is generic to all hole-doped copper oxide superconductors, and stripes, whose static form occurs in only one family of copper oxides over a narrow range of the phase diagram. Parker et al . report observations of the spatial reorganization of electronic states with the onset of the pseudogap state at T * in the high-temperature superconductor Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8+ x using scanning tunnelling microscopy. They find that the onset of the pseudogap phase coincides with the appearance of electronic patterns that have the predicted characteristics of fluctuating stripes. The experiments indicate that stripes are a consequence of pseudogap behaviour rather than its cause. A long-standing question has been the interplay between pseudogap, which is generic to all hole doped copper oxide superconductors, and stripes, whose static form occurs in only one family of copper oxides over a narrow range of the phase diagram. This study reports observations of the spatial reorganization of electronic states with the onset of the pseudogap state at T * in the high temperature superconductor Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8+ x using scanning tunnelling microscopy. The onset of the pseudogap phase coincides with the appearance of electronic patterns that have the predicted characteristics of fluctuating stripes. The experiments indicate that stripes are a consequence of pseudogap behaviour rather than its cause. Doped Mott insulators have a strong propensity to form patterns of holes and spins often referred to as stripes 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 . In copper oxides, doping also gives rise to the pseudogap state 6 , which can be transformed into a high-temperature superconducting state with sufficient doping or by reducing the temperature. A long-standing issue has been the interplay between the pseudogap, which is generic to all hole-doped copper oxide superconductors, and stripes, whose static form occurs in only one family of copper oxides over a narrow range of the phase diagram 2 , 7 . Here we report observations of the spatial reorganization of electronic states with the onset of the pseudogap state in the high-temperature superconductor Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8+ x , using spectroscopic mapping with a scanning tunnelling microscope. We find that the onset of the pseudogap phase coincides with the appearance of electronic patterns that have the predicted characteristics of fluctuating stripes 8 . As expected, the stripe patterns are strongest when the hole concentration in the CuO 2 planes is close to 1/8 (per copper atom) 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 8 . Although they demonstrate that the fluctuating stripes emerge with the onset of the pseudogap state and occur over a large part of the phase diagram, our experiments indicate that the stripes are a consequence of pseudogap behaviour rather than its cause.