We study a model for low-doped cuprates where holes aggregate into oriented stripe segments which have a magnetic vortex and antivortex at the extremes. We argue that due to the interaction between segments a ferronematic state with macroscopic polarization is stabilized. This state can be characterized as a charge nematic which, due to the net polarization, breaks inversion symmetry and also exhibits an incommensurate spin modulation. Our calculation can reproduce the doping-dependent spin structure factor of lanthanum cuprates in excellent agreement with experiment and allows to rationalize experiments in which the incommensurability has an order-parameter-like temperature dependence.
Empirical evidence in heavy fermion, pnictide and other systems suggests that unconventional superconductivity appears associated to some form of real-space electronic order. For the cuprates, despite several proposals, the emergence of order in the phase diagram between the commensurate antiferromagnetic state and the superconducting state is not well understood. Here we show that in this regime doped holes assemble in ‘electronic polymers’. Within a Monte Carlo study, we find that in clean systems by lowering the temperature the polymer melt condenses first in a smectic state and then in a Wigner crystal both with the addition of inversion symmetry breaking. Disorder blurs the positional order leaving a robust inversion symmetry breaking and a nematic order, accompanied by vector chiral spin order and with the persistence of a thermodynamic transition. Such electronic phases, whose properties are reminiscent of soft-matter physics, produce charge and spin responses in good accord with experiments.