Diagonal stripes in the spin glass phase of cuprates

Based on the unrestricted Gutzwiller approximation we study the possibility that the diagonal incommensurate spin scattering in the spin glass phase of lanthanum cuprates originates from stripe formation. Similar to the metallic phase two types of diagonal stripe structures appear to be stable: (a) site-centered textures which have one hole per site along the stripe and (b) ferromagnetic stair-case structures which are the diagonal equivalent to bond-centered stripes in the metallic phase and which on average have a filling of 3/4 holes per stripe site. We give a detailed analysis of the stability of both diagonal textures with regard to the vertical ones. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.