Competition between superconductivity and charge stripe order in high-T<SUB>c</SUB> cuprates

Members of the high-Tc cuprate family (with defect-free CuO<SUB>2</SUB> planes) are suggested to have an "Intrinsic single-layer superconducting T<SUB>c</SUB>", larger than the experimentally observed T<SUB>c</SUB>, 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<SUB>c</SUB>. Existing experimental results on the wide T<SUB>c</SUB> variation in the single-layer cuprate families, such as the low T<SUB>c</SUB> (&#8776; 38 K, 33 K) of LSCO and Bi-2201 compared to the high-T<SUB>c</SUB> (&#8776; 95 K, 98 K) of Tl-2201 and Hg-1201, the strain-induced increase in T<SUB>c</SUB> (25 to 50 K) observed in LSCO are qualitatively explained by our mechanism. We predict that under proper epitaxial strain, the T<SUB>c</SUB> of LSCO and Bi-2201 should increase from the 30's all the way up to the intrinsic T<SUB>c</SUB> ~ 90 K at optimal doping