Tunable striped-patterns by lattice anisotropy and magnetic impurities in d-wave superconductors

Abstract

The pattern transition induced by lattice anisotropy (LA) and magnetic impurities is computationally observed in near-optimally doped d-wave superconductors (DSCs). For the single impurity case, a transition from the checkerboard to stripe pattern can be induced even with a very weak LA. Moreover, the modulation period of eight lattice constants (8$a$) in the spin order coincides with neutron scattering data. For the two-impurity case, an orientation transition from the longitudinal impurity-pinned stripe into the transverse pattern is observed when the LA ratio reaches some critical value. At the critical point, it is found that the structures around magnetic impurities could restore checkerboard patterns. These results indicate that the formation of stripes in DSCs might induced by various effects, and could be tunable experimentally.