Response to comment on "Broken translational and rotational symmetry via charge stripe order in underdoped YBa2Cu3O6+y"

TL;DR

This paper defends the original interpretation of unidirectional charge stripes in underdoped YBa2Cu3O6+y against a critique, using local rotational-symmetry analysis to clarify the nature of observed charge modulations.

Contribution

It introduces a local rotational-symmetry analysis method to distinguish between unidirectional and checkerboard charge modulations in cuprate superconductors.

Findings

Simulated checkerboard-like images are actually composed of unidirectional modulations.

Local symmetry analysis confirms unidirectional charge density waves.

Supports original interpretation of charge order in cuprates.

Abstract

Fine questions our interpretation of unidirectional-stripes over bidirectional-checkerboard, and illustrates his criticism by simulating a momentum space structure consistent with our data and corresponding to a checkerboard-looking real space density. Here we use a local rotational-symmetry analysis to demonstrate that the simulated image is in actuality composed of locally unidirectional modulations of the charge density, consistent with our original conclusions.