Melting of Charge Stripes in Vibrationally Driven La1.875Ba0.125CuO4: Assessing the Respective Roles of Electronic and Lattice Order in Frustrated Superconductors

M. Först, R. I. Tobey, H. Bromberger, S. B. Wilkins, V. Khanna, A. D. Caviglia, Y.-D. Chuang, W. S. Lee, W. F. Schlotter, J. J. Turner, M. P. Minitti, O. Krupin, Z. J. Xu, J. S. Wen, G. D. Gu, S. S. Dhesi, A. Cavalleri, and J. P. Hill
Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 157002 – Published 17 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.

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  • Received 5 March 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.157002

© 2014 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

M. Först1,*, R. I. Tobey2, H. Bromberger1, S. B. Wilkins3, V. Khanna4,5, A. D. Caviglia1, Y.-D. Chuang6, W. S. Lee7, W. F. Schlotter8, J. J. Turner8, M. P. Minitti8, O. Krupin9, Z. J. Xu3, J. S. Wen3, G. D. Gu3, S. S. Dhesi5, A. Cavalleri1,4,10,†, and J. P. Hill3,§

  • 1Max-Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, 22761 Hamburg, Germany
  • 2Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, 9747AG Groningen, Netherlands
  • 3Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA
  • 4Department of Physics, Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PU, United Kingdom
  • 5Diamond Light Source, Chilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0QX, United Kingdom
  • 6Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley 94720, California, USA
  • 7SIMES, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, Menlo Park 94025, California, USA
  • 8Linac Coherent Light Source, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park 94025, California, USA
  • 9European XFEL GmbH, 22761 Hamburg, Germany
  • 10Center for Free Electron Laser Science and University of Hamburg, 22761 Hamburg, Germany

  • *michael.foerst@mpsd.mpg.de
  • andrea.cavalleri@mpsd.mpg.de
  • §hill@bnl.gov

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Vol. 112, Iss. 15 — 18 April 2014

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