Temperature dependent polarized XANES spectra for Zn-doped LSCO system

Abstract

The cuprates seem to exhibit statistics, dimensionality and phase transitions in novel ways. The nature of excitations (i.e. quasiparticle or collective), spin-charge separation, stripes (static and dynamics), inhomogeneities, pseudogap, effect of impurity dopings (e.g. Zn, Ni) and any other phenomenon in these materials must be consistently understood. Zn-doped LSCO single crystal, were grown by travelling solvent floating zone technique. Temperature dependent polarized XANES (near edge local structure) spectra were measured at the BL13-B1 (Photon Factory) in the fluorescence mode from 10 to 300 K. Since both stripes and nonmagnetic Zn impurities substituted for Cu give rise to inhomogeneous charge and spin distribution it is interesting to understand the interplay of Zn impurities and stripes. To understand these points we have used Zn-doping and some of the results obtained are as follows: The spectra show a strong dependence with respect to the polarization angle, θ, as is evident at any temperature by comparing the spectra where the electric field vector is parallel to the ab-plane to the one where it is parallel to the c-axis. By using the XANES (temperature) difference spectra we have determined T * (experimentally we find, T *≈ 160–170 K) for this sample. The XANES difference spectra shows that the changes in XANES features are larger in the ab-plane than the c-axis, this trend is expected since zinc is doped in the ab-plane at the copper site. Our study also complements the results in literature namely that zinc doping does not affect the c-axis transport.