Two routes to magnetic order by disorder in underdoped cuprates

Abstract

We study disorder-induced magnetism within the Gutzwiller approximation applied to the t-J model relevant for cuprate superconductors. In particular, we show how disorder generates magnetic phases by inducing local droplets of antiferromagnetic order which eventually merge, and form a quasi-long range ordered state in the underdoped regime. We identify two distinct disorder-induced magnetic phases of this type depending on the strength of the scatterers. For weak potential scatterers used to model dopant disorder, charge reorganization may push local regions in-between the impurities across the magnetic phase boundary, whereas for strong scatterers used to model substitutional ions, a local static magnetic moment is formed around each impurity. We calculate the density of states and find a remarkably universal low-energy behavior largely independent of both disorder and magnetization. However, the magnetic regions are characterized by larger (reduced) superconducting gap (coherence peaks) and a sub-gap kink in the density of states.

9 pages, 7 figures