Uniaxial stress study of spin and charge stripes in La1.875Ba0.125CuO4 by La139 NMR and Cu63 NQR

We study the response of spin and charge order in single crystals of La1.875Ba0.125CuO4 to uniaxial stress, through 139La nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and 63Cu nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR), respectively. In unstressed La1.875Ba0.125CuO4, the low-temperature tetragonal structure onsets below TLTT = 57 K, while the charge order and the spin order transition temperatures are TCO = 54 K and TSO = 37 K, respectively. We find that uniaxial stress along the [110] lattice direction strongly suppresses TCO and TSO, but has little effect on TLTT. In other words, under stress along [110] a large splitting (≈ 21 K) opens between TCO and TLTT, showing that these transitions are not tightly linked. On the other hand, stress along [100] causes a slight suppression of TLTT but has essentially no effect on TCO and TSO. Magnetic field H along [110] stabilizes the spin order: the suppression of TSO under stress along [110] is slower under H ∥ [110] than H ∥ [001]. We develop a Landau free energy model and interpret our findings as an interplay of symmetry breaking terms driven by the orientation of spins.