  Unidirectional ("stripe") charge-density-wave order has now been established
as a ubiquitous feature in the phase diagram of the cuprate high temperature
(HT) superconductors, where it generally competes with superconductivity (SC).
None-the-less, on theoretical grounds it has been conjectured that stripe order
(or other forms of "optimal" inhomogeneities) may play an essential positive
role in the mechanism of HTSC. Here we report density matrix renormalization
group studies of the Hubbard model on long 4 and 6 leg cylinders where the
hopping matrix elements transverse to the long direction are periodically
modulated - mimicing the effect of putative period-2 stripe order. We find even
modest amplitude modulations can enhance the long-distance SC correlations by
many orders of magnitude, and drive the system into a phase with a substantial
spin gap and SC quasi-long-range-order with a Luttinger exponent, $K_{sc} \sim
1$.
