Jenny Hoffman

Curriculum Vitae

Publications

FT-STS
Quasiparticle Interference
Vortex Checkerboard
Nanoscale Inhomogeneity

Ph.D. Thesis

Research

Adventures

Links

Contact

Home

A Four Unit Cell Periodic Pattern of Quasi-Particle States Surrounding Vortex Cores in Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O_8+x

J.E. Hoffman,¹ E.W. Hudson,^1,2* K.M. Lang,¹ V. Madhavan,¹ H. Eisaki,^3§ S. Uchida,³ J. C. Davis^1,2
1Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-7300, USA
²Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
³Department of Superconductivity, University of Tokyo, Yayoi, 2-11-16 Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan
^*Present address: Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
^§ Present addresses: Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, Califronia 94305-4060, USA

Science Volume 295 466-469 (18 January 2002).

Abstract

Scanning tunneling microscopy is used to image the additional quasi-particle states generated by quantized vortices in the high critical temperature superconductor Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O_8+x. They exhibit a copper-oxygen bond-oriented "checkerboard" pattern, with four unit cell (4a₀) periodicity and a ~30 angstrom decay length. These electronic modulations may be related to the magnetic feld-induced, 8a₀ periodic, spin density modulations with decay length ~70 angstroms recently discovered in La_1.84Sr_0.16CuO₄. The proposed explanation is a spin density wave localized surrounding each vortex core. General theoretical principles predict that, in the cuprates, a localized spin modulation of wavelength L should be associated with a corresponding electronic modulation of wavelength L/2, in good agreement with our observations.

[full text] [pdf] [email for pdf]

You can read also read the Perspective article about this paper by Subir Sachdev and Shou-Cheng Zhang:
"Tuning Order in Cuprate Superconductors"
Science 295, 452-454 (18 January 2002).

[summary] [full text] [pdf]