Electronic polymers and soft-matter-like broken symmetries in underdoped cuprates

M. Capati, S. Caprara, C. Di Castro, M. Grilli, G. Seibold and J. Lorenzana ()
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M. Capati: Università di Roma Sapienza
S. Caprara: Università di Roma Sapienza
C. Di Castro: Università di Roma Sapienza
M. Grilli: Università di Roma Sapienza
G. Seibold: Institut für Physik, BTU Cottbus—Senftenberg
J. Lorenzana: Università di Roma Sapienza

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Empirical evidence in heavy fermion, pnictide and other systems suggests that unconventional superconductivity appears associated to some form of real-space electronic order. For the cuprates, despite several proposals, the emergence of order in the phase diagram between the commensurate antiferromagnetic state and the superconducting state is not well understood. Here we show that in this regime doped holes assemble in ‘electronic polymers’. Within a Monte Carlo study, we find that in clean systems by lowering the temperature the polymer melt condenses first in a smectic state and then in a Wigner crystal both with the addition of inversion symmetry breaking. Disorder blurs the positional order leaving a robust inversion symmetry breaking and a nematic order, accompanied by vector chiral spin order and with the persistence of a thermodynamic transition. Such electronic phases, whose properties are reminiscent of soft-matter physics, produce charge and spin responses in good accord with experiments.

Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8691

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