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Enhancement of the Nernst effect by stripe order in a high-Tc superconductor

Nature volume 458, pages 743–745 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

The Nernst effect in metals is highly sensitive to two kinds of phase transition: superconductivity and density-wave order1. The large, positive Nernst signal observed in hole-doped high-Tc superconductors2 above their transition temperature (Tc) has so far been attributed to fluctuating superconductivity3. Here we report that in some of these materials the large Nernst signal is in fact the result of stripe order, a form of spin/charge modulation4 that causes a reconstruction of the Fermi surface5. In La2-xSr x CuO4 (LSCO) doped with Nd or Eu, the onset of stripe order causes the Nernst signal to change from being small and negative to being large and positive, as revealed either by lowering the hole concentration across the quantum critical point in Nd-doped LSCO (refs 6–8) or by lowering the temperature across the ordering temperature in Eu-doped LSCO (refs 9, 10). In the second case, two separate peaks are resolved, respectively associated with the onset of stripe order at high temperature and superconductivity near Tc.

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Figure 1: Transport coefficients and stripe order in Nd-LSCO and Eu-LSCO.
Figure 2: Doping evolution of the Nernst coefficient and Tν .

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Acknowledgements

We thank K. Behnia, S. Sachdev and A.-M. S. Tremblay for discussions, and J. Corbin for his assistance with the experiments. J.C. is supported by a Fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation. J.-S.Z. and J.B.G. were supported by a US National Science Foundation grant. H.T. acknowledges MEXT Japan for a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research. L.T. acknowledges support from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and funding from the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies and a Canada Research Chair.

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Author notes

  1. J.-Q. Yan

    Present address: Present address: Ames Laboratory, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA.,

  2. Olivier Cyr-Choinière and R. Daou: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Département de Physique and RQMP, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Québec J1K 2R1, Canada,

    Olivier Cyr-Choinière, R. Daou, Francis Laliberté, David LeBoeuf, Nicolas Doiron-Leyraud, J. Chang & Louis Taillefer

  2. Texas Materials Institute, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA ,

    J.-Q. Yan, J.-G. Cheng, J.-S. Zhou & J. B. Goodenough

  3. Department of Advanced Materials, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa 277-8561, Japan

    S. Pyon, T. Takayama, H. Takagi & Y. Tanaka

  4. RIKEN (The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research), Wako 351-0198, Japan

    H. Takagi

  5. RIKEN SPring8 Center, Hyogo 679-5148, Japan

    Y. Tanaka

  6. Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1Z8, Canada ,

    Louis Taillefer

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  1. Olivier Cyr-Choinière
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Louis Taillefer.

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Cyr-Choinière, O., Daou, R., Laliberté, F. et al. Enhancement of the Nernst effect by stripe order in a high-Tc superconductor. Nature 458, 743–745 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07931

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