Carrier Localization, Metal-Insulator Transitions and Stripe Formation in Inhomogeneous Hole-Doped Cuprates

TL;DR

This paper presents a unified theoretical framework to understand carrier localization, metal-insulator transitions, and stripe formation in inhomogeneously doped high-temperature cuprate superconductors, emphasizing the role of defect interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a continuum model and adiabatic approximation to describe carrier behavior, highlighting localization near dopants and the emergence of impurity centers in cuprates.

Findings

Localized hole carriers near dopants in La-based cuprates.

Formation of hydrogenic impurity centers at low doping.

Insights into the mechanisms behind MITs and stripe patterns.

Abstract

We propose a unified approach for describing the carrier localization, metal-insulator transitions (MITs) and stripe formation in high-$T_c$ cuprates. The ground-state energy of a carrier interacting with a defect and with lattice vibrations is calculated within the continuum model and adiabatic approximation. At low doping levels, hole carriers in $\rm{La}$-based systems with large-radius dopants are localized near the dopants with the formation of hydrogenic impurity centers.