  The interplay between thermal and quantum fluctuations controls the
competition between phases of matter in strongly correlated electron systems.
We study finite-temperature properties of the strongly coupled two-dimensional
doped Hubbard model using the minimally-entangled typical thermal states
(METTS) method on width $4$ cylinders. We discover that a phase characterized
by commensurate short-range antiferromagnetic correlations and no charge
ordering occurs at temperatures above the half-filled stripe phase extending to
zero temperature. The transition from the antiferromagnetic phase to the stripe
phase takes place at temperature $T/t \approx 0.05$ and is accompanied by a
step-like feature of the specific heat. We find the single-particle gap to be
smallest close to the nodal point at $\mathbf{k}=(\pi/2, \pi/2)$ and detect a
maximum in the magnetic susceptibility. These features bear a strong
resemblance to the pseudogap phase of high-temperature cuprate superconductors.
The simulations are verified using a variety of different unbiased numerical
methods in the three limiting cases of zero temperature, small lattice sizes,
and half-filling. Moreover, we compare to and confirm previous determinantal
quantum Monte Carlo results on incommensurate spin-density waves at finite
doping and temperature.
