The symmetry of charge order in cuprates

Charge-ordered ground states permeate the phenomenology of 3d-based transition metal oxides, and more generally represent a distinctive hallmark of strongly-correlated states of matter. The recent discovery of charge order in various cuprate families fueled new interest into the role played by this incipient broken symmetry within the complex phase diagram of high-Tc superconductors. Here we use resonant X-ray scattering to resolve the main characteristics of the charge-modulated state in two cuprate families: Bi2201 and YBCO. We detect no signatures of spatial modulations along the nodal direction in Bi2201, thus clarifying the inter-unit-cell momentum-structure of charge order. We also resolve the intra-unit-cell symmetry of the charge ordered state, which is revealed to be best represented by a bond-order with modulated charges on the O-2p orbitals and a prominent d-wave character. These results provide insights on the microscopic description of charge order in cuprates, and on its origin and interplay with superconductivity.Comment: A high-resolution version with supplementary material can be found at: http://www.phas.ubc.ca/~quantmat/ARPES/PUBLICATIONS/Articles/CDW_symmetry.pd

Crossover from Collective to Incoherent Spin Excitations in Superconducting Cuprates Probed by Detuned Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Scattering

Spin excitations in the overdoped high temperature superconductors Tl2Ba2CuO6+δ and (Bi,Pb)2(Sr,La)2CuO6+δ were investigated by resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) as functions of doping and detuning of the incoming photon energy above the Cu-L3 absorption peak. The RIXS spectra at optimal doping are dominated by a paramagnon feature with peak energy independent of photon energy, similar to prior results on underdoped cuprates. Beyond optimal doping, the RIXS data indicate a sharp crossover to a regime with a strong contribution from incoherent particle-hole excitations whose maximum shows a fluorescencelike shift upon detuning. The spectra of both compound families are closely similar, and their salient features are reproduced by exact-diagonalization calculations of the single-band Hubbard model on a finite cluster. The results are discussed in the light of recent transport experiments indicating a quantum phase transition near optimal doping

Dynamic density functional theory of solid tumor growth: Preliminary models

Cancer is a disease that can be seen as a complex system whose dynamics and growth result from nonlinear processes coupled across wide ranges of spatio-temporal scales. The current mathematical modeling literature addresses issues at various scales but the development of theoretical methodologies capable of bridging gaps across scales needs further study. We present a new theoretical framework based on Dynamic Density Functional Theory (DDFT) extended, for the first time, to the dynamics of living tissues by accounting for cell density correlations, different cell types, pheno-types and cell birth/death processes, in order to provide a biophysically consistent description of processes across the scales. We present an application of this approach to tumor growth. Copyright © 2012 Author(s)

Dynamic density functional theory of solid tumor growth: Preliminary models

Cancer is a disease that can be seen as a complex system whose dynamics and growth result from nonlinear processes coupled across wide ranges of spatio-temporal scales. The current mathematical modeling literature addresses issues at various scales but the development of theoretical methodologies capable of bridging gaps across scales needs further study. We present a new theoretical framework based on Dynamic Density Functional Theory (DDFT) extended, for the first time, to the dynamics of living tissues by accounting for cell density correlations, different cell types, phenotypes and cell birth/death processes, in order to provide a biophysically consistent description of processes across the scales. We present an application of this approach to tumor growth