Stripe phases in high-temperature superconductors

Abstract

Stripe phases are predicted and observed to occur in a class of strongly correlated materials describable as doped antiferromagnets, of which the copper-oxide superconductors are the most prominent representatives. The existence of stripe correlations necessitates the development of new principles for describing charge transport and especially superconductivity in these materials.

Figure 1

Schematic picture of a stripe-ordered phase. The arrows represent the magnetic or spin order, and the blue scale represents the local charge density. Regions of high charge density (stripes) lie between largely undoped regions, where the spin order is much the same as in the undoped antiferromagnet. In the figure, the stripes lie along the direction of the nearest-neighbor bonds, which we refer to as “vertical” stripes; when the stripes lie at 45° to this axis, they are said to be “diagonal.”