Percolative Pathway to Stripe Order in KTaO3-Based Superconductivity

TL;DR

This paper investigates how controlled disorder influences the emergence of stripe order in KTaO3-based superconductors, revealing a percolative transition from localized pairs to stripe phases driven by spin-orbit coupling.

Contribution

It demonstrates that disorder can tune and reveal the formation pathway of stripe order in 2D superconductors, linking microscopic mechanisms to emergent anisotropic phases.

Findings

Disorder induces a percolative transition to stripe order.

Stripe width correlates with spin precession length.

Disorder acts as a diagnostic for emergent superconductivity.

Abstract

The sensitivity of low dimensional superconductors to fluctuations gives rise to emergent behaviors beyond the conventional Bardeen Cooper Schrieffer framework. Anisotropy is one such manifestation, often linked to spatially modulated electronic states and unconventional pairing mechanisms. Pronounced in plane anisotropy recently reported at KTaO3 based oxide interfaces points to the emergence of a stripe order in superconducting phase, yet its microscopic origin and formation pathway remain unresolved. Here, we show that controlled interfacial disorder in MgO/KTaO3(111) heterostructures drives a percolative evolution from localized Cooper-pair islands to superconducting puddles and eventually to stripes. The extracted stripe width matches the spin precession length, suggesting a self organized modulation governed by spin orbit coupling and lattice-symmetry breaking. These findings identify disorder as both a tuning parameter and a diagnostic probe for emergent superconductivity in two dimensional quantum materials.