Broken translational and rotational symmetry via charge stripe order in underdoped YBa2Cu3O6+y

After the discovery of stripelike order in lanthanum-based copper oxide superconductors, charge-ordering instabilities were observed in all cuprate families. However, it has proven difficult to distinguish between unidirectional (stripes) and bidirectional (checkerboard) charge order in yttrium-and bismuth-based materials. We used resonant x-ray scattering to measure the two-dimensional structure factor in the superconductor YBa2Cu3O6+y in reciprocal space. Our data reveal the presence of charge stripe order (i.e., locally unidirectional density waves), which may represent the true microscopic nature of charge modulation in cuprates. At the same time, we find that the well-established competition between charge order and superconductivity is stronger for charge correlations across the stripes than along them, which provides additional evidence for the intrinsic unidirectional nature of the charge order.