Melting of charge stripes in vibrationally driven La(1.875)Ba(0.125)CuO4: assessing the respective roles of electronic and lattice order in frustrated superconductors.
We report femtosecond resonant soft x-ray diffraction measurements of the dynamics of the charge order and of the crystal lattice in nonsuperconducting, stripe-ordered La1.875Ba0.125CuO4. Excitation of the in-plane Cu-O stretching phonon with a midinfrared pulse has been previously shown to induce a transient superconducting state in the closely related compound La1.675Eu0.2Sr0.125CuO4. In La1.875Ba0.125CuO4, we find that the charge stripe order melts promptly on a subpicosecond time scale. Surprisingly, the low temperature tetragonal (LTT) distortion is only weakly reduced, reacting on significantly longer time scales that do not correlate with light-induced superconductivity. This experiment suggests that charge modulations alone, and not the LTT distortion, prevent superconductivity in equilibrium.
Max-Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, 22761 Hamburg, Germany.
M
M
Först
Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, 9747AG Groningen, Netherlands.
R I
RI
Tobey
Max-Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, 22761 Hamburg, Germany.
H
H
Bromberger
Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA.
S B
SB
Wilkins
Department of Physics, Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PU, United Kingdom and Diamond Light Source, Chilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0QX, United Kingdom.
V
V
Khanna
Max-Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, 22761 Hamburg, Germany.
A D
AD
Caviglia
Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley 94720, California, USA.
Y-D
YD
Chuang
SIMES, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, Menlo Park 94025, California, USA.
W S
WS
Lee
Linac Coherent Light Source, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park 94025, California, USA.
W F
WF
Schlotter
Linac Coherent Light Source, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park 94025, California, USA.
J J
JJ
Turner
Linac Coherent Light Source, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park 94025, California, USA.
M P
MP
Minitti
European XFEL GmbH, 22761 Hamburg, Germany.
O
O
Krupin
Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA.
Z J
ZJ
Xu
Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA.
J S
JS
Wen
Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA.
G D
GD
Gu
Diamond Light Source, Chilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0QX, United Kingdom.
S S
SS
Dhesi
Max-Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, 22761 Hamburg, Germany and Department of Physics, Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PU, United Kingdom and Center for Free Electron Laser Science and University of Hamburg, 22761 Hamburg, Germany.
A
A
Cavalleri
Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA.
J P
JP
Hill