Dynamic electron correlations with charge order wavelength along all directions in the copper oxide plane
Open Access
- 26 January 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Nature Communications
- Vol. 12 (1), 1-8
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20824-7
Abstract
In strongly correlated systems the strength of Coulomb interactions between electrons, relative to their kinetic energy, plays a central role in determining their emergent quantum mechanical phases. We perform resonant x-ray scattering on Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ, a prototypical cuprate superconductor, to probe electronic correlations within the CuO2 plane. We discover a dynamic quasi-circular pattern in the x-y scattering plane with a radius that matches the wave vector magnitude of the well-known static charge order. Along with doping- and temperature-dependent measurements, our experiments reveal a picture of charge order competing with superconductivity where short-range domains along x and y can dynamically rotate into any other in-plane direction. This quasi-circular spectrum, a hallmark of Brazovskii-type fluctuations, has immediate consequences to our understanding of rotational and translational symmetry breaking in the cuprates. We discuss how the combination of short- and long-range Coulomb interactions results in an effective non-monotonic potential that may determine the quasi-circular pattern.This publication has 60 references indexed in Scilit:
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