Spectral signatures of modulated d-wave superconducting phases

We calculate within a mean-field theory the spectral signatures of various striped d-wave superconducting phases. We consider both in-phase and anti-phase modulations of the superconducting order across a stripe boundary, and the effects of coexisting inhomogeneous orders, including spin stripes, charge stripes, and modulated d-density-wave. We find that the anti-phase modulated d-wave superconductor exhibits zero-energy spectral weight, primarily along extended arcs in momentum space. Concomitantly, a Fermi surface appears and typically includes both open segments and closed pockets. When weak homogeneous superconductivity is also present the Fermi surface collapses onto nodal points. Among them are the nodal points of the homogeneous d-wave superconductor, but others typically exist at positions which depend on the details of the modulation and the band structure. Upon increasing the amplitude of the constant component these additional points move towards the edges of the reduced Brillouin zone where they eventually disappear. The above signatures are also manifested in the density of states of the clean, and the disordered system. While the presence of coexisting orders changes some details of the spectral function, we find that the evolution of the Fermi-surface and the distribution of the low-energy spectral weight are largely unaffected by them.Comment: Published version. We added an appendix including the detailed Hamiltonians, and made other minor change

Weak-coupling phase diagrams of bond-aligned and diagonal doped Hubbard ladders

We study, using a perturbative renormalization group technique, the phase diagrams of bond-aligned and diagonal Hubbard ladders defined as sections of a square lattice with nearest-neighbor and next-nearest-neighbor hopping. We find that for not too large hole doping and small next-nearest-neighbor hopping the bond-aligned systems exhibit a fully spin-gapped phase while the diagonal systems remain gapless. Increasing the next-nearest-neighbor hopping typically leads to a decrease of the gap in the bond-aligned ladders, and to a transition into a gapped phase in the diagonal ladders. Embedding the ladders in an antiferromagnetic environment can lead to a reduction in the extent of the gapped phases. These findings suggest a relation between the orientation of hole-rich stripes and superconductivity as observed in LSCO.Comment: Published version. The set of RG equations in the presence of magnetization was corrected and two figures were replace