Abstract
A prevailing description of the stripe phase in underdoped cuprate superconductors is that the charge carriers (holes) phase segregate on a microscopic scale into hole-rich and hole-poor regions. We report resonant elastic x-ray scattering measurements of stripe-ordered at the Cu and O absorption edges that identify an additional feature of stripe order. Analysis of the energy dependence of the scattering intensity reveals that the dominant signature of the stripe order is a spatial modulation in the energies of Cu and O states rather than the large modulation of the charge density (valence) envisioned in the common stripe paradigm. These energy shifts are interpreted as a spatial modulation of the electronic structure and may point to a valence-bond-solid interpretation of the stripe phase.
- Received 12 March 2012
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.017001
© 2013 American Physical Society