Charge-density-wave origin of cuprate checkerboard visualized by scanning tunnelling microscopy

• Main Authors: Wise, W. D. (Contributor), Boyer, Michael C. (Contributor), Chatterjee, Kamalesh (Contributor), Kondo, Takeshi (Contributor), Takeuchi, T. (Author), Ikuta, H. (Author), Wang, Yayu (Contributor), Hudson, Eric (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Publishing Group, 2011-12-06T19:46:28Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 One of the main challenges in understanding high-Tc superconductivity is to disentangle the rich variety of states of matter that may coexist, cooperate or compete with d-wave superconductivity. At centre stage is the pseudogap phase, which occupies a large portion of the cuprate phase diagram surrounding the superconducting dome1. Using scanning tunnelling microscopy, we find that a static, non-dispersive, 'checkerboard'-like electronic modulation exists in a broad regime of the cuprate phase diagram and exhibits strong doping dependence. The continuous increase of checkerboard periodicity with hole density strongly suggests that the checkerboard originates from charge-density-wave formation in the antinodal region of the cuprate Fermi surface. These results reveal a coherent picture for static electronic orderings in the cuprates and shed important new light on the nature of the pseudogap phase.