Theory of Anisotropic Hopping Transport due to Spiral Correlations in the Spin-Glass Phase of Underdoped Cuprates

Abstract

We study the in-plane resistivity anisotropy in the spin-glass phase of the high-$T_c$ cuprates, on the basis of holes moving in a spiral spin background. This picture follows from analysis of the extended $t-J$ model with Coulomb impurities. In the variable-range hopping regime the resistivity anisotropy is found to have a maximum value of around 90%, and it decreases with temperature, in excellent agreement with experiments in La${}_{2-x}$Sr${}_x$CuO${}_4$. In our approach the transport anisotropy is due to the non-collinearity of the spiral spin state, rather than an intrinsic tendency of the charges to self-organize.

5 pages, 4 figures; expanded version

References in corpus (1)

• Dynamics of topological defects in a spiral: a scenario for the spin-glass phase of cuprates