Feedback of superconducting fluctuations on charge order in the underdoped cuprates

TL;DR

This paper investigates how superconducting fluctuations influence charge order in underdoped cuprates, revealing that these fluctuations favor the experimentally observed charge density wave wavevector within a certain temperature range.

Contribution

It demonstrates that superconducting fluctuations can stabilize the experimentally observed charge order wavevector, addressing discrepancies between theory and experiments in cuprates.

Findings

Superconducting fluctuations favor the observed charge order wavevector.

The effect occurs within a specific temperature window.

The study links fluctuations to experimentally relevant charge order.

Abstract

Metals interacting via short-range antiferromagnetic fluctuations are unstable to sign-changing superconductivity at low temperatures. For the cuprates, this leading instability leads to the well known $d-$wave superconducting state. However, there is also a secondary instability to an incommensurate charge density wave, with a predominantly $d-$wave form factor, arising from the same antiferromagnetic fluctuations. Recent experiments in the pseudogap regime of the hole-doped cuprates have found strong evidence for such a charge density wave order and, in particular, the predicted $d-$wave form factor. However, the observed wavevector of the charge order differs from the leading instability in Hartree-Fock theory, and is that of a subleading instability. In this paper, we examine the feedback of superconducting fluctuations on these different charge-density wave states, and find that over at least a small temperature window, they prefer the experimentally observed wavevector.