Broken translational and rotational symmetry via charge stripe order in underdoped YBa 2 Cu 3 O 6+ y

Abstract

Picking out the elusive stripes Copper-oxide superconductors have periodic modulations of charge density. Typically, the modulation is not the same for the whole crystal, but breaks up into small nanosized domains. Bulk experiments show that the density is modulated along both axes in the copper-oxide plane, but it is not clear whether this is true only on the scale of the whole crystal or also locally, for each domain. Comin et al. analyzed the charge order in the compound YBa 2 Cu 3 O 6+y , using resonant x-ray scattering, and found that it was consistent with a local unidirectional, so-called stripy, ordering. Science , this issue p. 1335