CPM Seminar

Charge Density Wave Order and Nematicity in High-Temperature Superconductors

David Hawthorn

Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Waterloo

The discovery of superconductivity in cuprate high temperature superconductors set off a massive worldwide research effort aimed at developing superconductors for practical applications - perfect conductors, levitating trains, quantum electronics. Equally important was an intense theoretical and experimental effort to understand the physics responsible for the superconductivity in the cuprates, physics which differs from well understood ‘conventional’ superconductors. Recently, important breakthroughs have shed new light on this longstanding problem. It has now been found that charge density wave order (CDW) and nematicity (rotational symmetry breaking) occur generically in the cuprates, are intertwined with superconductivity and are of central importance to many aspects of the cuprate problem. In this talk, I will review the CDW state, nematicity and some of our group's recent investigations of these orders using a novel experimental technique, resonant soft x-ray scattering.