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Spatially modulated 'Mottness' in La2-xBaxCuO4

Nature Physics volume 1, pages 155–158 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Competition between magnetism and the kinetic energy of mobile carriers (typically holes) in doped antiferromagnets may lead to ‘stripe’ phases1,2,3,4, which are charged rivers separating regions of oppositely phased antiferromagnetism. In copper oxides the main experimental evidence for such coexisting static spin and charge order comes from neutron scattering in La1.48Nd0.4Sr0.12CuO4 (LNSCO; ref. 5) and La1.875Ba0.125CuO4 (LBCO; ref. 6). However, as a neutron is neutral, it does not detect charge but rather its associated lattice distortion7, so it is not known whether the stripes involve ordering of the doped holes. Here we present a study of the charge order in LBCO with resonant soft X-ray scattering (RSXS). We observe giant resonances near the Fermi level as well as near the correlated gap8,9, demonstrating significant modulation in both the doped-hole density and the ‘Mottness’, or the degree to which the system resembles a Mott insulator10. The peak-to-trough amplitude of the valence modulation is estimated to be 0.063 holes, which suggests11 an integrated area of 0.59 holes under a single stripe, close to the expected 0.5 for half-filled stripes.

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Figure 1: A ‘resonance profile’, that is, the energy dependence of the (1/4,0,L) charge scattering compared with XAS.
Figure 2: Reciprocal space map of charge correlations in the (H, 0, L) plane.
Figure 3: Determining the X-ray form factor, fDmn(ω), for a single doped hole.
Figure 4: Temperature dependence of the charge scattering.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge T. Valla for assistance with sample cleaving and discussions with S. K. Sinha, J. M. Tranquada, C. Schüßler-Langheine, P. A. Lee and W. Ku. This work was supported by the US Department of Energy, NWO (Dutch Science Foundation) and FOM (Netherlands Organization for Fundamental Research on Matter).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Synchrotron Light Source and Physics Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York, 11973, USA

    P. Abbamonte, A. Rusydi, S. Smadici & G. D. Gu

  2. Department of Physics, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, 61801, USA

    P. Abbamonte

  3. Materials Science Centre, University of Groningen, 9747, AG Groningen, The Netherlands

    A. Rusydi & G. A. Sawatzky

  4. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T-1Z1, Canada

    G. A. Sawatzky

  5. Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shangai, 200433, China

    D. L. Feng

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  1. P. Abbamonte
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Correspondence to P. Abbamonte.

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Abbamonte, P., Rusydi, A., Smadici, S. et al. Spatially modulated 'Mottness' in La2-xBaxCuO4. Nature Phys 1, 155–158 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys178

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