Charge- versus spin driven stripe order: the role of transversal spin fluctuations

The separation of the charge- and spin ordering temperatures of the stripe phase in cuprate superconductors has been used to argue that the striped phase is charge driven. Scaling analysis of a non-linear sigma model shows that the effect of spatial anisotropy on the transversal spin fluctuations is much more drastic at finite temperatures than at zero temperature. These results suggest that the spin fluctuations prohibit the spin system to condense at the charge ordering temperature, despite a possible dominance of charge-spin coupling in the longitudinal channel.