Electronic liquid crystal state in the high-temperature superconductor YBCO(6.45)

Abstract

Electronic phases with symmetry properties matching those of conventional liquid crystals have recently been discovered in transport experiments on semiconductor heterostructures and metal oxides at milli-Kelvin temperatures. We report the spontaneous onset of a onedimensional, incommensurate modulation of the spin system in the high-temperature superconductor YBa2Cu3O6.45 upon cooling below ~150 K, while static magnetic order is absent above 2 K. The evolution of this modulation with temperature and doping parallels that of the in-plane anisotropy of the resistivity, indicating an electronic nematic phase that is stable over a wide temperature range. The results suggest that soft spin fluctuations are a microscopic route towards electronic liquid crystals, and nematic order can coexist with high-temperature superconductivity in underdoped cuprates.

10 pages, 4+2 figures, includes a "materials and methods" as well as a "supporting text" section

References in corpus (4)

• An Intrinsic Bond-Centered Electronic Glass with Unidirectional Domains in Underdoped Cuprates
• Spin dynamics in the pseudogap state of a high-temperature superconductor
• Anisotropic spin and charge excitations in superconductors: signature of electronic nematic order
• Theory of Anisotropic Hopping Transport due to Spiral Correlations in the Spin-Glass Phase of Underdoped Cuprates

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Renormalization group theory of nematic ordering in d-wave superconductors
• Theory of the nodal nematic quantum phase transition in superconductors
• First-Order Type Effects in YBa${}_2$Cu${}_3$O${}_{6+x}$ at the Onset of Superconductivity
• Intimate relations between electronic nematic, d-density wave and d-wave superconducting states