Letter abstract
Nature Physics 4, 696 - 699 (2008)
Published online: 6 July 2008 | doi:10.1038/nphys1021
Charge-density-wave origin of cuprate checkerboard visualized by scanning tunnelling microscopy
W. D. Wise1, M. C. Boyer1, Kamalesh Chatterjee1, Takeshi Kondo1,2,4, T. Takeuchi2,3, H. Ikuta2, Yayu Wang1,4 & E. W. Hudson1
One of the main challenges in understanding high-Tc superconductivity is to disentangle the rich variety of states of matter that may coexist, cooperate or compete with d-wave superconductivity. At centre stage is the pseudogap phase, which occupies a large portion of the cuprate phase diagram surrounding the superconducting dome1. Using scanning tunnelling microscopy, we find that a static, non-dispersive, 'checkerboard'-like electronic modulation exists in a broad regime of the cuprate phase diagram and exhibits strong doping dependence. The continuous increase of checkerboard periodicity with hole density strongly suggests that the checkerboard originates from charge-density-wave formation in the antinodal region of the cuprate Fermi surface. These results reveal a coherent picture for static electronic orderings in the cuprates and shed important new light on the nature of the pseudogap phase.
- Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
- Department of Crystalline Materials Science, Nagoya University, Nagoya 464-8603, Japan
- EcoTopia Science Institute, Nagoya University, Nagoya 464-8603, Japan
- Present address: Ames Laboratory and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA (T.K.); Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China (Y.W.)
Correspondence to: E. W. Hudson1 e-mail: ehudson@mit.edu