Modelling Magnetic Fluctuations in the Stripe Ordered State

TL;DR

This paper models magnetic fluctuations in stripe-ordered phases of cuprates, revealing two possible magnetic ordering scenarios and analyzing their experimental distinguishability.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified model of stripe phases using coupled ladders and explores magnetic responses with potential scenarios for spin modulation directions.

Findings

Two possible magnetic ordering scenarios identified.

Interladder coupling can induce spin modulation along or perpendicular to stripes.

Experimental data currently cannot distinguish between these scenarios.

Abstract

The nature of the interplay between superconductivity and magnetism in the cuprates remains one of the fundamental unsolved problems in high temperature superconductivity. Whether and how these two phenomena are interdependent is perhaps most sharply seen in the stripe phases of various copper-oxide materials. These phases, involving a mixture of spin and charge density waves, do not yet admit a complete, overarching theoretical treatment. However aspects of this problem can be analyzed. In this work, we focus on the magnetic side of stripe physics. To this end, we study a simple model of a stripe-ordered phase consisting of an array of alternating coupled doped and undoped two-leg Hubbard-like ladders. To obtain the magnetic response, we employ already available dynamical susceptibilities of the individual two-leg ladders and treat the interladder coupling in a random phase approximation. Strikingly, we find two possible scenarios for the ordered state induced by the coupling between ladders: the spin modulation can occur either along or perpendicular to the direction of the stripes. These two scenarios are differentiated according to different microscopic realizations of the component doped ladders. However inelastic neutron scattering experiments on the two stripe ordered cuprates, La_{1.875}Ba_{0.125}CuO_4 and La_{2-x}Sr_xCuO_4, do not readily distinguish between these two scenarios due to manner in which stripes form in these materials.