Direct evidence for charge stripes in a layered cobalt oxide

Babkevich, P, Freeman, Paul Gregory orcid iconORCID: 0000-0002-5376-8940, Enderle, M, Prabhakaran, D and Boothroyd, AT (2016) Direct evidence for charge stripes in a layered cobalt oxide. Nature Communications, 7 . p. 11632. ISSN 2041-1723

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms11632

Abstract

Recent experiments indicate that static stripe-like charge order is generic to the hole-doped copper oxide superconductors and competes with superconductivity. Here we show that a similar type of charge order is present in La5/3 Sr1/3 CoO4 , an insulating analogue of the copper oxide superconductors containing cobalt in place of copper. The stripe phase we have detected is accompanied by short-range, quasi-one-dimensional, antiferromagnetic order, and provides a natural explanation for the distinctive hour- glass shape of the magnetic spectrum previously observed in neutron scattering mea- surements of La2−xSrx CoO4 and many hole-doped copper oxide superconductors. The results establish a solid empirical basis for theories of the hourglass spectrum built on short-range, quasi-static, stripe correlations.


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