Charge-spin-orbital coupling in CuO

The electron pairing mechanism for superconductivity in cuprates is general ly attributed to magnetic interactions because superconductivity occurs on the verge of frustrated low-dimensional antiferromagnetic order in Cu-O pla nes or chains. CuO is the simplest copper oxide that may be the fundamental one not just because till now only compounds containing the Cu-O-Cu bond h ave produced the high-T-c superconductivity but also because recently we fo und that charge stripes exist in this simplest compound. Here we report str ong charge-spin-orbital coupling in CuO, which shows that CuO is a referenc e system for studying the electron correlation in cuprates. (C) 2001 Publis hed by Elsevier Science B.V.