  In a multiorbital model of the cuprate high-temperature superconductors soft
antiferromagnetic (AF) modes are assumed to reconstruct the Fermi surface to
form nodal pockets. The subsequent charge ordering transition leads to a phase
with a spatially modulated transfer of charge between neighboring oxygen p_x
and p_y orbitals and also weak modulations of the charge density on the copper
d_{x^2-y^2} orbitals. As a prime result of the AF Fermi surface reconstruction,
the wavevectors of the charge modulations are oriented along the crystalline
axes with a periodicity that agrees quantitatively with experiments. This
resolves a discrepancy between experiments, which find axial order, and
previous theoretical calculations, which find modulation wavevectors along the
Brillouin zone (BZ) diagonal. The axial order is stabilized by hopping
processes via the Cu4s orbital, which is commonly not included in model
analyses of cuprate superconductors.
