Hu Miao, Roberto Fumagalli, M. Rossi, José Lorenzana, Götz Seibold, Flora Yakhou-Harris, K. Kummer, Nicholas B. Brookes, G. D. Gu, Lucio Braicovich, Giacomo Claudio Ghiringhelli, M. P. M. Dean
- Although charge density waves (CDWs) are omnipresent in cuprate high-temperature superconductors, they occur at significantly different wave vectors, confounding efforts to understand their formation mechanism. Here, we use resonant inelastic x-ray scattering to investigate the doping- and temperature-dependent CDW evolution in La₂₋ₓBaₓCuO₄ (x=0.115–0.155). We discover that the CDW develops in two stages with decreasing temperature. A precursor CDW with a quasicommensurate wave vector emerges first at high temperature. This doping-independent precursor CDW correlation originates from the CDW phase mode coupled with a phonon and “seeds” the low-temperature CDW with a strongly doping-dependent wave vector. Our observation reveals the precursor CDW and its phase mode as the building blocks of the highly intertwined electronic ground state in the cuprates.