Magnetic phase diagram of underdoped YBa2Cu3Oy inferred from torque magnetization and thermal conductivity

Abstract

Strong evidence for charge-density correlation in the underdoped phase of the cuprate YBa2Cu3Oy was obtained by NMR and resonant X-ray scattering. The fluctuations were found to be enhanced in strong magnetic fields. Recently, 3D charge-density-wave (CDW) formation with long-range order (LRO) was observed by X-ray diffraction in H> 15 T. To elucidate how the CDW transition impacts the pair condensate, we have used torque magnetization to 45 T and thermal conductivity kappa(xx) to construct the magnetic phase diagram in untwinned crystals with hole density p = 0.11. We show that the 3D CDW transitions appear as sharp features in the susceptibility and kappa(xx) at the fields H-K and H-p, which define phase boundaries in agreement with spectroscopic techniques. From measurements of the melting field H-m(T) of the vortex solid, we obtain evidence for two vortex solid states below 8 K. At 0.5 K, the pair condensate appears to adjust to the 3D CDW by a sharp transition at 24 T between two vortex solids with very different shear moduli. At even higher H (41 T), the second vortex solid melts to a vortex liquid which survives to fields well above 41 T. de Haas-van Alphen oscillations appear at fields 24-28 T, below the lower bound for the upper critical field Hc(2).