Incompatibility of modulated checkerboard patterns with the neutron scattering resonance peak in cuprate superconductors

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that all proposed checkerboard patterns in cuprate superconductors are incompatible with neutron scattering data, especially regarding the resonance peak at (pi,pi), challenging their validity as explanations for observed phenomena.

Contribution

The study systematically analyzes various complex checkerboard patterns using spin wave theory and shows their inconsistency with neutron scattering results, including the absence of the resonance peak.

Findings

Modulated checkerboards fail to produce the resonance peak at (pi,pi).

Noncollinear checkerboards also lack the resonance feature.

No current checkerboard pattern satisfies all experimental constraints.

Abstract

Checkerboard patterns have been proposed in order to explain STM experiments on the cuprates BSCCO and Na-CCOC. However the presence of these patterns has not been confirmed by a bulk probe such as neutron scattering. In particular, simple checkerboard patterns are inconsistent with neutron scattering data, in that they have low energy incommsensurate (IC) spin peaks rotated 45 degrees from the direction of the charge IC peaks. However, it is unclear whether other checkerboard patterns can solve the problem. In this paper, we have studied more complicated checkerboard patterns ("modulated checkerboards") by using spin wave theory and analyzed noncollinear checkerboards as well. We find that the high energy response of the modulated checkerboards is inconsistent with neutron scattering results, since they fail to exhibit a resonance peak at (pi,pi), which has recently been shown to be a universal feature of cuprate superconductors. We further argue that the newly proposed noncollinear checkerboard also lacks a resonance peak. We thus conclude that to date no checkerboard pattern has been proposed which satisfies both the low energy constraints and the high energy constraints imposed by the current body of experimental data in cuprate superconductors.