Thermal conductivity of lightly Sr- and Zn-doped La$_2$CuO$_4$ single crystals

Abstract

Both ab-plane and c-axis thermal conductivities ($κ_{ab}$ and $κ_c$) of lightly doped La$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$CuO$_4$ and La$_2$Cu$_{1-y}$Zn$_y$O$_4$ single crystals ($x$ or $y$ = 0 -- 0.04) are measured from 2 to 300 K. It is found that the low-temperature phonon peak (at 20 -- 25 K) is significantly suppressed upon Sr or Zn doping even at very low doping, though its precise doping dependences show interesting differences between the Sr and Zn dopants, or between the $ab$ plane and the c axis. Most notably, the phonon peak in $κ_c$ decreases much more quickly with Sr doping than with Zn doping, while the phonon-peak suppression in $κ_{ab}$ shows an opposite trend. It is discussed that the scattering of phonons by stripes is playing an important role in the damping of the phonon heat transport in lightly doped LSCO, in which static spin stripes has been observed by neutron scattering. We also show $κ_{ab}$ and $κ_c$ data of La$_{1.28}$Nd$_{0.6}$Sr$_{0.12}$CuO$_4$ and La$_{1.68}$Eu$_{0.2}$Sr$_{0.12}$CuO$_4$ single crystals to compare with the data of the lightly doped crystals for the discussion of the role of stripes. At high temperature, the magnon peak (i.e., the peak caused by the spin heat transport near the Néel temperature) in $κ_{ab}(T)$ is found to be rather robust against Zn doping, while it completely disappears with only 1% of Sr doping.

7 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. B