Using Uniaxial Stress to Probe the Relationship between Competing Superconducting States in a Cuprate with Spin-stripe Order

Understanding to which degree charge, spin, and superconducting orders compete or coexist is paramount for elucidating the microscopic pairing mechanism in the cuprate high-temperature superconductors (HTSs). In this talk, I will report muon spin rotation and magnetic susceptibility experiments on in-plane stress effects on the static spin-stripe order and superconductivity in the cuprate system La_2−xBa_xCuO₄ with x = 0.115. An extremely low uniaxial stress of 0.1 GPa induces a substantial decrease in the magnetic volume fraction and a dramatic rise in the onset of 3D superconductivity, from 10 to 32 K; however, the onset of at-least-2D superconductivity is much less sensitive to stress. These results show not only that large-volume-fraction spin-stripe order is anticorrelated with 3D superconducting coherence but also that these states are energetically very finely balanced. Moreover, the onset temperatures of 3D superconductivity and spin-stripe order are very similar in the large stress regime. These results strongly suggest a similar pairing mechanism for spin-stripe order and the spatially modulated 2D and uniform 3D superconducting orders, imposing an important constraint on theoretical models.

[1] Z. Guguchia et. al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 097005 (2020).