Crystallization of charge holes in the spin ladder of Sr14Cu24O41

P. Abbamonte (), G. Blumberg, A. Rusydi, A. Gozar, P. G. Evans, T. Siegrist, L. Venema, H. Eisaki, E. D. Isaacs and G. A. Sawatzky
Additional contact information
P. Abbamonte: Brookhaven National Laboratory
G. Blumberg: Lucent Technologies
A. Rusydi: Brookhaven National Laboratory
A. Gozar: Lucent Technologies
P. G. Evans: University of Wisconsin
T. Siegrist: Lucent Technologies
L. Venema: University of Groningen
H. Eisaki: Nanoelectronics Research Institute, AIST
E. D. Isaacs: Lucent Technologies
G. A. Sawatzky: University of British Columbia

Nature, 2004, vol. 431, issue 7012, 1078-1081

Abstract: Abstract Determining the nature of the electronic phases that compete with superconductivity in high-transition-temperature (high-Tc) superconductors is one of the deepest problems in condensed matter physics. One candidate is the ‘stripe’ phase1,2,3, in which the charge carriers (holes) condense into rivers of charge that separate regions of antiferromagnetism. A related but lesser known system is the ‘spin ladder’, which consists of two coupled chains of magnetic ions forming an array of rungs. A doped ladder can be thought of as a high-Tc material with lower dimensionality, and has been predicted to exhibit both superconductivity4,5,6 and an insulating ‘hole crystal’4,7,8 phase in which the carriers are localized through many-body interactions. The competition between the two resembles that believed to operate between stripes and superconductivity in high-Tc materials9. Here we report the existence of a hole crystal in the doped spin ladder of Sr14Cu24O41 using a resonant X-ray scattering technique10. This phase exists without a detectable distortion in the structural lattice, indicating that it arises from many-body electronic effects. Our measurements confirm theoretical predictions4,7,8, and support the picture that proximity to charge ordered states is a general property of superconductivity in copper oxides.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02925 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:431:y:2004:i:7012:d:10.1038_nature02925

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature02925

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().