Magnetic Excitations of Stripes and Checkerboards in the Cuprates

Abstract

We discuss the magnetic excitations of well-ordered stripe and checkerboard phases, including the high energy magnetic excitations of recent interest and possible connections to the "resonance peak" in cuprate superconductors. Using a suitably parametrized Heisenberg model and spin wave theory, we study a variety of magnetically ordered configurations, including vertical and diagonal site- and bond-centered stripes and simple checkerboards. We calculate the expected neutron scattering intensities as a function of energy and momentum. At zero frequency, the satellite peaks of even square-wave stripes are suppressed by as much as a factor of 34 below the intensity of the main incommensurate peaks. We further find that at low energy, spin wave cones may not always be resolvable experimentally. Rather, the intensity as a function of position around the cone depends strongly on the coupling across the stripe domain walls. At intermediate energy, we find a saddlepoint at $(\pi ,\pi )$ for a range of couplings, and discuss its possible connection to the "resonance peak" observed in neutron scattering experiments on cuprate superconductors. At high energy, various structures are possible as a function of coupling strength and configuration, including a high energy square-shaped continuum originally attributed to the quantum excitations of spin ladders. On the other hand, we find that simple checkerboard patterns are inconsistent with experimental results from neutron scattering.

11 pages, 13 figures, for high-res figs, see http://physics.bu.edu/~yaodx/spinwave2/spinw2.html

References in corpus (4)

• A `checkerboard' electronic crystal state in lightly hole-doped Ca_{2-x}Na_{x}CuO_{2}Cl_{2}
• Magnetic excitations in a bond-centered stripe phase: Spin waves far from the semi-classical limit
• Spin Waves in Striped Phases
• Phenomenological lattice model for dynamic spin and charge fluctuations in the cuprates

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• Modelling Magnetic Fluctuations in the Stripe Ordered State
• Incompatibility of modulated checkerboard patterns with the neutron scattering resonance peak in cuprate superconductors
• Spin-wave dispersion in half-doped LaSrNiO
• Phenomenological theory of spin excitations in La- and Y-based cuprates