arXiv subjects

J. M. Tranquada

Publications and source records attributed to J. M. Tranquada.

At least 127 records · Page 7Linked to original sources

arXiv2006

Charge order, metallic behavior and superconductivity in La_{2-x}Ba_xCuO_4 with x=1/8

The ab-plane optical properties of a cleaved single crystal of La_{2-x}Ba_xCuO_4 for x=1/8 (T_c ~ 2.4 K) have been measured over a wide frequency and temperature range. The low-frequency conductivity is Drude-like and shows a metallic response with decreasing temperature. However, below ~ 60 K, corresponding to the onset of charge-stripe order, there is a rapid loss of spectral weight below about 40 meV. The gapping of single-particle excitations looks surprisingly similar to that observed in superconducting La_{2-x}Sr_{x}CuO_4, including the presence of a residual Drude peak with reduced weight; the main difference is that the lost spectral weight moves to high, rather than zero, frequency, reflecting the absence of a bulk superconducting condensate.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2006

Electron-phonon coupling reflecting dynamic charge inhomogeneity in copper-oxide superconductors

The attempt to understand cuprate superconductors is complicated by the presence of multiple strong interactions. While many believe that antiferromagnetism is important for the superconductivity, there has been revived interest in the role of electron-lattice coupling. The recently studied conventional superconductor MgB2 has a very strong electron-lattice coupling, involving a particular vibrational mode (phonon), that was predicted by standard theory and confirmed quantitatively by experiment. Here we present inelastic scattering measurements that show a similarly strong anomaly in the Cu-O bond-stretching phonon in the cuprate superconductors La2-xSrxCuO4 (with x=0.07, 0.15). This is in contrast to conventional theory, which does not predict such behavior. The anomaly is strongest in La1.875Ba0.125CuO4 and La1.48Nd0.4Sr0.12CuO4, compounds that exhibit spatially modulated charge and magnetic order, often called stripe order. It occurs at a wave vector corresponding to the charge order. These results suggest that this giant electron-phonon anomaly, which is absent in undoped and over-doped non-superconductors, is associated with charge inhomogeneity. It follows that electron-phonon coupling may be important to our understanding of superconductivity, although its contribution to the mechanism is likely to be indirect.

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arXiv2005

Charge stripes in cuprate superconductors: The middle way

Charge and spin stripe order is a type of electronic crystal observed in certain layered cuprates associated with high-temperature superconductivity. Quantum-disordered stripes could be relevant for understanding the superconductivity. Here I discuss recent experimental characterizations of the stripe-ordered state in La(1.875)Ba(0.125)CuO(4), and compare them with properties of superconducting compositions.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2005

Stripes and superconductivity in cuprate superconductors

One type of order that has been observed to compete with superconductivity in cuprates involves alternating charge and antiferromagnetic stripes. Recent neutron scattering studies indicate that the magnetic excitation spectrum of a stripe-ordered sample is very similar to that observed in superconducting samples. In fact, it now appears that there may be a universal magnetic spectrum for the cuprates. One likely implication of this universal spectrum is that stripes of a dynamic form are present in the superconducting samples. On cooling through the superconducting transition temperature, a gap opens in the magnetic spectrum, and the weight lost at low energy piles up above the gap; the transition temperature is correlated with the size of the spin gap. Depending on the magnitude of the spin gap with respect to the magnetic spectrum, the enhanced magnetic scattering at low temperature can be either commensurate or incommensurate. Connections between stripe correlations and superconductivity are discussed.

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arXiv2005

Inelastic neutron scattering study of phonons and magnetic excitations in LaCoO$_{3}$

We have investigated the phonon and the magnetic excitations in LaCoO3 by inelastic neutron scattering measurements. The acoustic phonon dispersions show some characteristic features of the folded Brillouin zone (BZ) for the rhombohedrally distorted perovskite structure containing two chemical formula units of LaCoO3 in the unit cell. We observed two transverse optical (TO) phonon branches along (delta, delta, delta), consistent with previously reported Raman active Eg modes which show remarkable softening associated with the spin-state transition [Ishikawa et al., (Phys. Rev. Lett. 93 (2004) 136401.)]. We found that the softening takes place in the TO mode over the whole BZ. In contrast, the acoustic phonons show no anomalous softening associated with the spin-state transition. The low-energy paramagnetic scattering at 8 K is weak, increasing towards a maximum at E > 15 meV, consistent with excitation of the nonmagnetic low-spin to magnetic intermediate-spin state of Co 3+ ions.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2004

Universal magnetic excitation spectrum in cuprates

We have recently used inelastic neutron scattering to measure the magnetic excitation spectrum of La(1.875)Ba(0.125)CuO(4) up to 200 meV. This particular cuprate is of interest because it exhibits static charge and spin stripe order. The observed spectrum is remarkably similar to that found in superconducting YBa(2)Cu(3)O(6+x) and La(2-x)Sr(x)CuO(4); the main differences are associated with the spin gap. We suggest that essentially all observed features of the magnetic scattering from cuprate superconductors can be described by a universal magnetic excitation spectrum multiplied by a spin gap function with a material-dependent spin-gap energy.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2004

Neutron scattering study on La1.9Ca1.1Cu2O6+delta and La1.85Sr0.15CaCu2O6+delta

We present neutron scattering data on two single crystals of the high temperature superconductor La2-x(Ca,Sr)xCaCu2O6+delta. The Ca0.1-doped crystal exhibits a long-range antiferromagnetically ordered ground state. In contrast, the Sr0.15-doped crystal exhibits short-range antiferromagnetic order as well as weak superconductivity. In both crystals antiferromagnetic correlations are commensurate; however, some results on the Ca0.1-doped crystal resemble those on the spin-glass phase of La2-xSrxCuO4, where magnetic correlations became incommensurate. In addition, both crystals show a structural transition from tetragonal to orthorhombic symmetry. Quite remarkably, the temperature dependence and correlation length of the magnetic order is very similar to that of the orthorhombic distortion. We attribute this behavior to an orthorhombic strain-induced inter-bilayer magnetic coupling, which triggers the antiferromagnetic order. The large size of the crystals made it also possible to study the magnetic diffuse scattering along rods perpendicular to the CuO2 planes in more detail. For comparison we show X-ray diffraction and magnetization data. In particular, for the Ca0.1-doped crystal these measurements reveal valuable information on the spin-glass transition as well as a second anomaly associated with the Neel transition.

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arXiv2004

Universal features of charge and spin order in a half-doped layered perovskite

We have investigated the peculiar structure of charge and spin ordering in the half-doped layered perovskite oxide La$_{1.5}$Sr$_{0.5}$CoO$_4$ by elastic neutron scattering. Two samples with different preparation histories were studied. We find that the generic features of the ordered states, such as their short-range, glassy nature and the spin incommensurability, are sample-independent. At the same time, some subtle features of the ordered phases, such as the correlation lengths, differ.

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arXiv2004

Quantum Magnetic Excitations from Stripes in Copper-Oxide Superconductors

In the copper-oxide parent compounds of the high-transition-temperature superconductors, the valence electrons are localized, one per copper site, due to strong intraatomic Coulomb repulsion. A symptom of the localization is antiferromagnetism, where the spins of localized electrons alternate between up and down. The superconductivity appears when mobile 'holes' are doped into this insulating state, and it coexists with antiferromagnetic fluctuations. In one approach to the coexistence, the holes are believed to self-organize into 'stripes' that alternate with antiferromagnetic (insulating) regions within copper-oxide planes. Such an unusual electronic state would necessitate an unconventional mechanism of superconductivity. There is an apparent problem with this picture, however: measurements of magnetic excitations in superconducting YBa(2)Cu(3)O(6+x) near optimum doping are incompatible with the naive expectations for a material with stripes. Here we report neutron scattering measurements on stripe-ordered La(1.875)Ba(0.125)CuO(4). We show that the measured excitations are, surprisingly, quite similar to those in YBa(2)Cu(3)O(6+x) (i.e., the predicted spectrum of magnetic excitations is wrong). We find instead that the observed spectrum can be understood within a stripe model by taking account of quantum excitations. Our results support the concept that stripe correlations are essential to high-transition-temperature superconductivity.

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arXiv2004

Stripe order, depinning, and fluctuations in La$_{1.875}$Ba$_{0.125}$CuO$_{4}$ and La$_{1.875}$Ba$_{0.075}$Sr$_{0.050}$CuO$_{4}$

We present a neutron scattering study of stripe correlations measured on a single crystal of La$_{1.875}$Ba$_{0.125}$CuO$_{4}$. Within the low-temperature-tetragonal (LTT) phase, superlattice peaks indicative of spin and charge stripe order are observed below 50 K. For excitation energies $\hbarω\le12$ meV, we have characterized the magnetic excitations that emerge from the incommensurate magnetic superlattice peaks. In the ordered state, these excitations are similar to spin waves. Following these excitations as a function of temperature, we find that there is relatively little change in the {\bf Q}-integrated dynamical spin susceptibility for $\hbarω\sim10$ meV as stripe order disappears and then as the structure transforms from LTT to the low-temperature-orthorhombic (LTO) phase. The {\bf Q}-integrated signal at lower energies changes more dramatically through these transitions, as it must in a transformation from an ordered to a disordered state. We argue that the continuous evolution through the transitions provides direct evidence that the incommensurate spin excitations in the disordered state are an indicator of dynamical charge stripes. An interesting feature of the thermal evolution is a variation in the incommensurability of the magnetic scattering. Similar behavior is observed in measurements on a single crystal of La$_{1.875}$Ba$_{0.075}$Sr$_{0.050}$CuO$_{4}$; maps of the scattered intensity in a region centered on the antiferromagnetic wave vector and measured at $\hbarω=4$ meV are well reproduced by a model of disordered stripes with a temperature-dependent mixture of stripe spacings. We discuss the relevance of our results to understanding the magnetic excitations in cuprate superconductors.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2004

Interplay of structural and electronic phase separation in single crystalline La(2)CuO(4.05) studied by neutron and Raman scattering

We report a neutron and Raman scattering study of a single-crystal of La(2)CuO(4.05) prepared by high temperature electrochemical oxidation. Elastic neutron scattering measurements show the presence of two phases, corresponding to the two edges of the first miscibility gap, all the way up to 300 K. An additional oxygen redistribution, driven by electronic energies, is identified at 250 K in Raman scattering (RS) experiments by the simultaneous onset of two-phonon and two-magnon scattering, which are fingerprints of the insulating phase. Elastic neutron scattering measurements show directly an antiferromagnetic ordering below a Néel temperature of T_N =210K. The opening of the superconducting gap manifests itself as a redistribution of electronic Raman scattering below the superconducting transition temperature, T_c = 24K. A pronounced temperature-dependent suppression of the intensity of the (100) magnetic Bragg peak has been detected below T_c. We ascribe this phenomenon to a change of relative volume fraction of superconducting and antiferromagnetic phases with decreasing temperature caused by a form of a superconducting proximity effect.

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arXiv2003

Oxygen and Strontium Codoping of La2NiO4: Room Temperature Phase Diagrams

We present a detailed room temperature x-ray powder diffraction study on La2-xSrxNiO4+d with 0<=x<=0.12 and 0<=d<=0.13. For x=0.02, 0.04 and 0.06 the oxygen content phase diagrams of the Sr doped samples show a similar sequence of pure phases and miscibility gaps as for pure La2NiO4+d. We find a weak Sr doping dependence of the d-range for the pure LTO, LTT and HTT phases; but overall, the d-ranges of the different phases do not vary strongly for x<=0.06. Drastic changes are observed for x=0.08 and 0.12, where miscibility gaps successively disappear. For x=0.12 all oxygen doped samples are in the HTT phase. The mechanism responsible for the suppression of the phase separation seems to involves multiple factors, including the Coulomb interaction between Sr impurities and interstitial oxygens as well as the reduction of the NiO6 octahedral tilt angle. The doping dependence of the lattice parameters shows clear differences for pure Sr and pure O doping. With the exception of the LTO phase, the in-plane lattice parameters explicitly depend on the type of dopant, rather than the net hole content, p=x+2d. In contrast, the orthorhombic strain in the LTO phase as well as the c-axis length appears to depend only on p; however, in the case of the c-axis length this ''universal'' behavior turns out to be accidental. Our results also show that the chemical pressure of La-site dopants is highly anisotropic, whereas that of O interstitials appears to be more isotropic. In general, this study reveals that Sr-doped samples have to be annealed carefully to achieve d=0, and to permit the study of the intrinsic properties of La2-xSrxNiO4.

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arXiv2003

Evidence for an incommensurate magnetic resonance in La(2-x)Sr(x)CuO(4)

We study the effect of a magnetic field (applied along the c-axis) on the low-energy, incommensurate magnetic fluctuations in superconducting La(1.82)Sr(0.18)CuO(4). The incommensurate peaks at 9 meV, which in zero-field were previously shown to sharpen in q on cooling below T_c [T. E. Mason et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 1604 (1996)], are found to broaden in q when a field of 10 T is applied. The applied field also causes scattered intensity to shift into the spin gap. We point out that the response at 9 meV, though occurring at incommensurate wave vectors, is comparable to the commensurate magnetic resonance observed at higher energies in other cuprate superconductors.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2003

Oxygen Phonon Branches in YBa2Cu3O7

We report results of inelastic neutron scattering measurements of phonon dispersions in optimally doped YBa2Cu3O6.95 and compare them with model calculations. The focus is on the in-plane oxygen bond-stretching phonon branches. The study of these modes is complicated by anticrossings with c-axis-polarized branches; such effects are interpreted through lattice-dynamical shell-model calculations. The in-plane anisotropy of the bond-stretching phonons was firmly ascertained from measurements on a detwinned sample. Studying the in-plane modes involving out-of-phase motion for the two Cu-O layers within a unit cell as well as those with in-phase motion was of great help for establishing a clear experimental picture. The measurements confirm that the in-plane oxygen bond-stretching phonon branches disperse steeply downwards from the zone center in both the a and the b directions indicating a strong electron-phonon coupling. For the b-axis-polarized bond-stretching phonons, there is an additional feature of considerable interest: a sharp local frequency minimum was found to develop on cooling from room temperature to T = 10 K at the wave vector q = 0.27 r.l.u..

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2003

Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya Spin Canting in the LTT Phase of La2-x-yEuySrxCuO4

The Cu spin magnetism in La2-x-yEuySrxCuO4 (x<=0.17; y<=0.2) has been studied by means of magnetization measurements up to 14 T. Our results clearly show that in the antiferromagnetic phase Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya (DM)superexchange causes Cu spin canting not only in the LTO phase but also in the LTLO and LTT phases. In La1.8Eu0.2CuO4 the canted DM-moment is about 50% larger than in pure La2CuO4 which we attribute to the larger octahedral tilt angle. We also find clear evidence that the size of the DM-moment does not change significantly at the structural transition at T_LT from LTO to LTLO and LTT. The most important change induced by the transition is a significant reduction of the magnetic coupling between the CuO2 planes. As a consequence, the spin-flip transition of the canted Cu spins which is observed in the LTO phase for magnetic field perpendicular to the CuO2 planes disappears in the LTT phase. The shape of the magnetization curves changes from the well known spin-flip type to a weak-ferromagnet type. However, no spontaneous weak ferromagnetism is observed even at very low temperatures, which seems to indicate that the interlayer decoupling in our samples is not perfect. Nonetheless, a small fraction (<15%) of the DM-moments can be remanently magnetized throughout the entire antiferromagnetically ordered LTT/LTLO phase, i.e. for T<T_LT and x<0.02. It appears that the remanent DM-moment is perpendicular to the CuO2 planes. For magnetic field parallel to the CuO2 planes we find that the critical field of the spin-flop transition decreases in the LTLO phase, which might indicate a competition between different in-plane anisotropies. To study the Cu spin magnetism in La2-x-yEuySrxCuO4, a careful analysis of the Van Vleck paramagnetism of the Eu3+ ions was performed.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2003

Spin excitations in stripe-ordered La2-xSrxNiO4 (x=0.275 and 1/3)

We report neutron scattering measurements of the spectrum of magnetic excitations in the stripe-ordered phase of La2-xSrxNiO4 (x=0.275 and 1/3). The propagating spin excitations follow a similar dispersion relation for the two compositions, but the line widths are broader for x=0.275 than for x=1/3.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2003

Evidence for Dynamic Charge Stripes in the Phonons of Optimally Doped YBCO

Inelastic neutron scattering investigations on optimally doped YBCO revealed a very pronounced temperature dependence in the Cu-O in-plane bond-stretching vibrations along the (010) direction: a shift of spectral weight by at least 10 meV has been observed in a narrow range of wave vectors halfway to the zone boundary. The temperature evolution starts at about 200 K, well above the superconducting transition temperature. The displacement pattern of the anomalous phonons indicates a dynamic one-dimensional charge-density modulation within the planes, but excludes a direct contribution from the Cu-O chains.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2003

Metallic charge stripes in cuprates

Some recent evidence for the existence of dynamic, metallic stripes in the 214-family of cuprates is reviewed. The mechanism of stripe pinning is considered, and changes in the charge density within stripes between the pinned and dynamic phases is discussed. From a purely experimental perspective, dynamic charge stripes are fully compatible with nodal ``quasiparticles'' and other electronic properties common to all superconducting cuprates.

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