La₂₋ₓBaₓCuO₄ at 1/8 doping is the poster child for stripe-suppressed superconductivity. Charge and spin stripes form a static order that pins the doping at exactly the ratio where superconductivity should be strongest, and the transition temperature drops to 5 K — an anomalous dip in an otherwise smooth dome. The conventional explanation: stripes compete with superconductivity.

The paper applies modest in-plane stress and watches the transition temperature rise to 37 K — a sevenfold increase from a mechanical perturbation. Muon-spin rotation shows that the stress suppresses the low-temperature tetragonal phase and reduces the volume fraction of static stripe order. The superconducting volume fraction increases in lockstep.

But the resolution isn’t “stripes bad, superconductivity good.” The 37 K transition temperature at 1/8 doping is optimal — as high as any doping in the La-214 family under the same conditions. The stripe-forming composition, freed from static order, hosts the strongest superconductivity. The stripe interactions that order statically at low stress appear to enhance the pairing at higher stress, when the static order is disrupted but the fluctuating correlations remain.

Static stripes suppress phase coherence, not pairing. The Cooper pairs form — the stripe interactions help them form — but they can’t establish long-range phase coherence through the static stripe matrix. Stress disrupts the static order while preserving the fluctuating pairing correlations.

Competition and cooperation from the same interaction, separated by whether the stripes are frozen or fluctuating. The paradox dissolves once you distinguish pairing from coherence.