Melting of stripe phases and its signature in the single-particle spectral function

TL;DR

This study investigates how stripe phases in a cuprate material melt with temperature, revealing a mean-field like transition and characteristic spectral features such as flat bands and gaps, aligning with experimental observations.

Contribution

It demonstrates that stripe melting occurs in a mean-field manner regardless of hopping parameters, and links spectral features to stripe order in a realistic model.

Findings

Stripe order melts in a mean-field manner.

Flat bands form around antinodal points during melting.

A gap opens in the nodal direction as temperature increases.

Abstract

Motivated by the recent experimental data [Phys. Rev. B 79, 100502 (2009)] indicating the existence of a pure stripe charge order over unprecedently wide temperature range in La_{1.8-x}Eu_{0.2}Sr_xCuO_4, we investigate the temperature-induced melting of the metallic stripe phase. In spite of taking into account local dynamic correlations within a real-space dynamical mean-field theory of the Hubbard model, we observe a mean-field like melting of the stripe order irrespective of the choice of the next-nearest neighbor hopping. The temperature dependence of the single-particle spectral function shows the stripe induced formation of a flat band around the antinodal points accompanied by the opening a gap in the nodal direction.