The stripe scenario in high Tc superconductors

A new heterogeneous electronic phase of condensed matter made of stripes of itinerant charges, (10-20 Angstroms wide) appears as a generic feature of doped ternary transition metal oxides (manganites, cuprates and nickelates) showing some of the most fascinating phenomena in solid state physics, such as high Tc superconductivity and colossal magnetoresistance. This novel state of matter is shown to arise from the instability of a 2D electron gas close to wigner localization limit. The physics of the melting of a polaron wigner lattice as a function of temperature is tudied in the case of heavily doped manganites. A review of the experimental evidence for a 1D Wigner CDW coexisting with high Tc superconductivity based on advanced x-ray diffraction, x-ray spectroscopy and angle resolved photoemission methods using x-ray synchrotron radiation will be presented.