Effect of planar impurities on the superfluid density of striped cuprates

Abstract

We propose a mechanism for superconductivity suppression in stripe-correlated cuprates based on the pinning of the stripes by impurities, such as Zn. The suppression of superfluid density occurs in the vicinity of the impurity due to the low dimensional character of superfluid carriers on the stripes. Simple geometric argument about the planar fraction of the carriers, affected by stripe pinning, leads to prediction for impurity critical concentration $z_c \sim T^2_c$ and for the linear $T_c$ suppression by Zn doping. We show that our results reproduce the Uemura relation in the pure system and we predict the behavior of the superfluidy density as a function of Zn concentration. We compare our results with available data.