Neutron-scattering study of impurity effects on the stripe order in high-Tc cuprate

Abstract We have performed elastic neutron scattering measurements on La 1.875 Ba 0.125 Cu 0.97 Zn 0.03 O 4 in order to study non-magnetic Zn impurity effects on stripe order in the doped cuprates. At low temperature, superlattice peaks originated from both spin-density-wave (SDW) and charge-density-wave (CDW) orders were observed. With increasing the temperature, SDW and CDW orders simultaneously disappears at ∼ 30 K, which is ∼ 20 K lower than that for Zn-free La 1.875 Ba 0.125 CuO 4 . This result combined with broader peak-width for SDW and CDW orders in the present Zn-doped system indicates a suppression of the development of stripe order by Zn-substitution. However, the peak intensity of both orders shows similar temperature dependence below the identical ordering temperature, suggesting the cooperative relation between spin and charge correlations.