Structural origins of the infamous "Low Temperature Orthorhombic" to "Low Temperature Tetragonal" phase transition in high-Tc cuprates

Tidey, Jeremiah P.; Keegan, Christopher; Bristowe, Nicholas C.; Mostofi, Arash A.; Hong, Zih-Mei; Chen, Bo-Hao; Chuang, Yu-Chun; Chen, Wei-Tin; Senn, Mark S

Abstract

We undertake a detailed high-resolution diffraction study of a plain band insulator, La2MgO4, which may be viewed as a structural surrogate system of the undoped end-member of the high-Tc superconductor family La2−x−yA2+xR3+yCuO 4 (A=Ba,Sr;R=rare earth). We find that La2MgO4 exhibits the infamous low-temperature orthorhombic (LTO) to low-temperature tetragonal (LTT) phase transition that has been linked to the suppression of superconductivity in a variety of underdoped cuprates, including the well-known La2−xBaxCuO4 (x=0.125). Furthermore, we find that the LTO-to-LTT phase transition in La2MgO4 occurs for an octahedral tilt angle in the 4∘–5∘ range, similar to that which has previously been identified as a critical tipping point for superconductivity in these systems. We show that this phase transition, occurring in a system lacking spin correlations and competing electronic states such as charge density waves and superconductivity, can be understood by simply navigating the density functional theory ground-state energy landscape as a function of the order parameter amplitude. This result calls for a careful reinvestigation of the origins of the phase transitions in high-Tc superconductors based on the hole-doped, n=1 Ruddlesden-Popper lanthanum cuprates.

Citation

Tidey, J. P., Keegan, C., Bristowe, N. C., Mostofi, A. A., Hong, Z., Chen, B., …Senn, M. S. (2022). Structural origins of the infamous "Low Temperature Orthorhombic" to "Low Temperature Tetragonal" phase transition in high-Tc cuprates. Physical Review B, 106(8), Article 085112. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.106.085112

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 6, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Aug 8, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022-08
• Deposit Date: Jul 11, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 16, 2022
• Journal: Physical review B: Condensed matter and materials physics
• Print ISSN: 2469-9950
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 106
• Issue: 8
• Article Number: 085112
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.106.085112
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1198987
• Related Public URLs: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.11888