Stripe Phases in High Temperature Superconductors
John Tranquada,
Physics Dept., Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973
Abstract
The occurrence of high-temperature superconductivity in layered copper-oxide
compounds has confounded researchers for more than a decade. These materials
are doped Mott insulators, and, surprisingly, they retain some features typical
of a correlated insulator, such as local antiferromagnetism, even in the
superconducting regime. Neutron and x-ray scattering experiments have
provided evidence that the contrary insulating and metallic characteristics of
the cuprates are accommodated by a spatial separation of the charge carriers
and the local magnetic moments that takes the form of a dynamic stripe phase.
The experimental evidence for charge stripes will be explained, and the
implications of stripe correlations for the superconductivity will be
discussed.
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