Abstract
Charge-stripe order has recently been established as an important aspect of cuprate high-Tc superconductors. However, owing to the complex interplay between competing phases and the influence of disorder, it is unclear how it emerges from the parent high-temperature state. Here we report on the discovery of an unconventional ordered phase between charge-stripe order and (pseudogapped) metal in the cuprate La1.8−xEu0.2SrxCuO4. We use three complementary experiments—nuclear quadrupole resonance, nonlinear conductivity and specific heat—to demonstrate that the order appears through a sharp phase transition and exists in a dome-shaped region of the phase diagram. Our results imply that the new phase is a state, which preserves translational symmetry: a charge nematic. We thus resolve the process of charge-stripe development in cuprates, show that this nematic phase is distinct from high-temperature pseudogap and establish a link with other strongly correlated electronic materials with prominent nematic order.
Highlights
Charge-stripe order has recently been established as an important aspect of cuprate high-Tc superconductors
It is well known that lanthanum cuprates in their lowtemperature tetragonal (LTT) phases have prominent charge and spin stripe order; the archetypal example is La2 À xBaxCuO4 (LBCO), where superconductivity is strongly suppressed by stripe order around x 1⁄4 1/8, and separate charge and spin stripe ordering temperatures are observed in neutron scattering, transport and magnetic susceptibility[27,28,29]
We find that the nematic order closely follows the dome-shaped charge-stripe appearance in the phase diagram, implying that it is separate from the high-temperature pseudogap in LESCO
Summary
Charge-stripe order has recently been established as an important aspect of cuprate high-Tc superconductors. We resolve the process of charge-stripe development in cuprates, show that this nematic phase is distinct from high-temperature pseudogap and establish a link with other strongly correlated electronic materials with prominent nematic order. We use the europium co-doped LESCO as a representative system for studying charge-stripe physics, owing to static charge stripes disappearing spontaneously far below the LTT/LTO transition temperature[5,30,31,32]. We show that the stripes develop through an unconventional precursor phase consistent with a charge nematic This phase is found to be insensitive to disorder, appearing at a true thermodynamic phase transition, in agreement with recent theoretical predictions for nematics[9]. We find that the nematic order closely follows the dome-shaped charge-stripe appearance in the phase diagram, implying that it is separate from the high-temperature pseudogap in LESCO
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