Melting of charge stripes in vibrationally driven La1.875Ba0.125CuO4: assessing the respective roles of electronic and lattice order in frustrated superconductors

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.157002
PMID: 24785066

Authors: M. Foerst (Max-Planck Department for Structural Dynamics, Center for Free Electron Laser Science, University of Hamburg) , R. Tobey (University of Groningen) , H. Bromberger (University of Hamberg) , S. Wilkins (Brookhaven National Laboratory) , V. Khanna (Diamond Light Source) , A. Caviglia (Max-Planck Institute) , Y.-D. Chuang (Advanced Light Source) , W. S. Lee (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) , W. F. Schlotter (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) , J. J. Turner (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) , M. P. Minitti (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) , O. Krupin (European XFEL) , Z. J. Xu (Brookhaven National Laboratory) , J. S. Wen (Brookhaven National Laboratory) , G. D. Gu (Brookhaven National Laboratory) , S. S. Dhesi (Diamond Light Source) , A. Cavalleri (University of Oxford) , J. P. Hill (Brookhaven National Laboratory)
Co-authored by industrial partner: No

Type: Journal Paper
Journal: Physical Review Letters , VOL 112 (15) , PAGES 3009-3015

State: Published (Approved)
Published: April 2014

Abstract: We report femtosecond resonant soft x-ray diffraction measurements of the dynamics of the charge order and of the crystal lattice in nonsuperconducting, stripe-ordered La1.875Ba0.125CuO4. Excitation of the in-plane Cu-O stretching phonon with a midinfrared pulse has been previously shown to induce a transient superconducting state in the closely related compound La1.675Eu0.2Sr0.125CuO4. In La1.875Ba0.125CuO4, we find that the charge stripe order melts promptly on a subpicosecond time scale. Surprisingly, the low temperature tetragonal (LTT) distortion is only weakly reduced, reacting on significantly longer time scales that do not correlate with light-induced superconductivity. This experiment suggests that charge modulations alone, and not the LTT distortion, prevent superconductivity in equilibrium.

Subject Areas: Physics, Materials


Instruments: I06-Nanoscience (XPEEM)

Other Facilities: SXR at Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS)

Added On: 14/05/2014 13:26

Discipline Tags:

Superconductors Quantum Materials Physics Materials Science

Technical Tags:

Diffraction Soft X-ray Diffraction (SXD)