No Arabic abstract
Results of Fe K-, As K-, and La L3-edge x-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) measurements on LaO1-xFxFeAs compounds are presented. The Fe K- edge exhibits a chemical shift to lower energy, near edge feature modifications, and pre-edge feature suppression as a result of F substitution for O. The former two changes provide evidence of electron charge transfer to the Fe sites and the latter directly supports the delivery of this charge into the Fe-3d orbitals. The As K- edge measurements show spectral structures typical of compounds with planes of transition-metal tetrahedrally coordinated to p-block elements as is illustrated by comparison to other such materials. The insensitivity of the As-K edge to doping, along with the strong Fe-K doping response, is consistent with band structure calculations showing essentially pure Fe-d character near the Fermi energy in these materials. The energy of the continuum resonance feature above the La-L3 edge is shown to be quantitatively consistent with the reported La-O inter-atomic separation and with other oxide compounds containing rare earth elements.
The mechanism of superconductivity and magnetism and their possible interplay have recently been under debate in pnictides. A likely pairing mechanism includes an important role of spin fluctuations and can be expressed in terms of the magnetic susceptibility chi. The latter is therefore a key quantity in the determination of both the magnetic properties of the system in the normal state, and of the contribution of spin fluctuations to the pairing potential. A basic ingredient to obtain chi is the independent-electron susceptibility chi0. Using LaO1-xFxFeAs as a prototype material, in this report we present a detailed ab-initio study of chi0(q,omega), as a function of doping and of the internal atomic positions. The resulting static chi0(q,0) is consistent with both the observed M-point related magnetic stripe phase in the parent compound, and with the existence of incommensurate magnetic structures predicted by ab-initio calculations upon doping.
The competition of magnetic order and superconductivity is a key element in the physics of all unconventional superconductors, e.g. in high-transition-temperature cuprates 1, heavy fermions 2 and organic superconductors3. Here superconductivity is often found close to a quantum critical point where long-range antiferromagnetic order is gradually suppressed as a function of a control parameter, e.g. charge carrier doping or pressure. It is believed that dynamic spin fluctuations associated with this quantum critical behaviour are crucial for the mechanism of superconductivity. Recently high-temperature superconductivity has been discovered in iron-pnictides providing a new class of unconventional superconductors4,5,6. Similar to other unconventional superconductors the parent compounds of the pnictides exhibit a magnetic ground state7,8 and superconductivity is induced upon charge carrier doping. In this Letter the structural and electronic phase diagram is investigated by means of x-ray scattering, MuSR and Moessbauer spectroscopy on the series LaO1-xFxFeAs. We find a discontinuous first-order-like change of the Neel temperature, the superconducting transition temperature and of the respective order parameters. Our results strongly question the relevance of quantum critical behaviour in ironpnictides and prove a strong coupling of the structural orthorhombic distortion and the magnetic order both disappearing at the phase boundary to the superconducting state.
AC susceptibility measurements have been carried out on superconducting LaO1-xFxFeAs for x=0.07 and 0.14 under He-gas pressures to about 0.8 GPa. Not only do the measured values of dTc/dP differ substantially from those obtained in previous studies using other pressure media, but the Tc(P) dependences observed depend on the detailed pressure/temperature history of the sample. A sizeable sensitivity of Tc(P) to shear stresses provides a possible explanation.
We investigated the recently found superconductor LaO_{1-x}F_xFeAs by X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS). From a comparison of the O K-edge with LDA calculations we find good agreement and are able to explain the structure and changes of the spectra with electron doping. An important result from this edge is a limitation of the Hubbard U to values not significantly larger than 1 eV. From experimental Fe L_2,3-edge spectra and charge transfer multiplet calculations we gain further information on important physical values such as hopping parameters, the charge transfer energy Delta, and the on-site Hubbard U. Furthermore we find the system to be very covalent with a large amount of ligand holes. A shift in the chemical potential is visible in the O K- and Fe L_2,3-edge spectra which emphasizes the importance of band effects in these compounds.
Measurements of polarization and temperature dependent soft x-ray absorption have been performed on Na_xCoO_2 single crystals with x=0.4 and x=0.6. They show a deviation of the local trigonal symmetry of the CoO_6 octahedra, which is temperature independent in a temperature range between 25 K and 372 K. This deviation was found to be different for Co^{3+} and Co^{4+} sites. With the help of a cluster calculation we are able to interpret the Co L_{23}-edge absorption spectrum and find a doping dependent energy splitting between the t_{2g} and the e_g levels (10Dq) in Na_xCoO_2.