Highly Anisotropic Anomaly in the Dispersion of the Copper-Oxygen Bond-Bending Phonon in Superconducting YBa2Cu3O7 from Inelastic Neutron Scattering

Motivated by predictions of a substantial contribution of the "buckling'' vibration of the CuO2 layers to d-wave superconductivity in the cuprates, we have performed an inelastic neutron scattering study of this phonon in an array of untwinned crystals of YBa2Cu3O7. The data reveal a pronounced softening of the phonon at the in-plane wave vector q = (0, 0.3) upon cooling below similar to 105 K, but no corresponding anomaly at q = (0.3,0). Based on the observed in-plane anisotropy, we argue that the electron-phonon interaction responsible for this anomaly supports an electronic instability associated with a uniaxial charge-density modulation and does not mediate d-wave superconductivity. © 2011, American Physical Society