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, $K_{sc} sim 1$.
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