Resonant x-ray scattering studies of charge order in cuprates

Understand

X-ray techniques have been used for more than a century to study the atomic and electronic structure in virtually any type of material.

• The advent of correlated electron systems, in particular complex oxides, brought about new scientific challenges and opportunities for the advancement of conventional x-ray methods.
• In this context, the need for new approaches capable of selectively sensing new forms of orders involving all degrees of freedom -- charge, orbital, spin, and lattice -- paved the way for the emergence and success of resonant x-ray scattering, which has become an increasingly popular and powerful tool for the study of electronic ordering phenomena in solids.
• Here we review the recent resonant x-ray scattering breakthroughs in the copper oxide high-temperature superconductors, in particular regarding the phenomenon of charge order -- a broken-symmetry state occurring when valence electrons self-organize into periodic structures.