Abstract

In the study of dynamic charge order correlations in the cuprates, most high energy-resolution resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) measurements have focused on momenta along the high-symmetry directions of the copper oxide plane. However, electron scattering along other in-plane directions should not be neglected as they may contain information relevant, for example, to the origin of charge order correlations or to our understanding of the isotropic scattering responsible for strange metal behavior in cuprates. We report high-resolution resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) experiments that reveal the presence of dynamic electron correlations over the qx-qy scattering plane in underdoped Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ with Tc=54 K. We use the softening of the RIXS-measured bond stretching phonon line as a marker for the presence of charge-order-related dynamic electron correlations. The experiments show that these dynamic correlations exist at energies below approximately 70 meV and are centered around a quasi-circular manifold in the qx-qy scattering plane with radius equal to the magnitude of the charge order wave vector, qCO. We also demonstrate how this phonon-tracking procedure provides the necessary experimental precision to rule out fluctuations of short-range directional charge order (i.e. centered around [qx=±qCO,qy=0] and [qx=0,qy=±qCO]) as the origin of the observed correlations.