Using Uniaxial Stress to Probe the Relationship between Competing Superconducting States in a Cuprate with Spin-stripe Order
Z. Guguchia, Debarchan Das, Chennan Wang, Tadashi Adachi, N. Kitajima, Matthias Elender, F. Brückner, Shreenanda Ghosh, Vadim Grinenko, T. Shiroka, Markus Müller, Christopher Mudry, C. Baines, M. Bartkowiak, Y. Koike, A. Amato, J. M. Tranquada, H.‐H. Klauß, Clifford W. Hicks, H. Luetkens
Abstract
We 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-x}Ba_{x}CuO_{4} 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.