Competition between superconductivity and charge stripe order in high-Tc cuprates

Members of the high-T-c cuprate family (with defect-free CuO2 planes) are suggested to have an "Intrinsic single-layer superconducting T-c", larger than the experimentally observed T-c, at a given hole concentration. This difference occurs to varying degrees among the different members due to an anomalous response of the d-wave superconducting state to self-generated charge perturbations. In particular, any quasielastic charge stripe order, arising from electron-electron and electron-lattice coupling, can suppress the large intrinsic superconducting T-c. Existing experimental results on the wide T-c variation in the single-layer cuprate families, such as the low T-c (approximate to 38 K, 33 K) of LSCO and Bi-2201 compared to the high-T-c (approximate to 95 K, 98 K) of Tl-2201 and Hg-1201, the strain-induced increase in T-c (25 to 50 K) observed in LSCO are qualitatively explained hy our mechanism. We predict that under proper epitaxial strain, the T-c of LSCO and Bi-2201 should increase from the 30's all the way up to the intrinsic T-c similar to 90 K at optimal doping.