Direct evidence for charge stripes in a layered cobalt oxide.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27212023.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms11632 and PMC identifier 4879241.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Recent experiments indicate that static stripe-like charge order is generic to the hole-doped copper oxide superconductors and competes with superconductivity. Here we show that a similar type of charge order is present in La5/3Sr1/3CoO4, an insulating analogue of the copper oxide superconductors containing cobalt in place of copper. The stripe phase we have detected is accompanied by short-range, quasi-one-dimensional, antiferromagnetic order, and provides a natural explanation for the distinctive hourglass shape of the magnetic spectrum previously observed in neutron-scattering measurements of La2-xSrxCoO4 and many hole-doped copper oxide superconductors. The results establish a solid empirical basis for theories of the hourglass spectrum built on short-range, quasi-static, stripe correlations.