No Arabic abstract
We present a detailed study of 75As NMR Knight shift and spin-lattice relaxation rate in the normal state of stoichiometric polycrystalline LiFeAs. Our analysis of the Korringa relation suggests that LiFeAs exhibits strong antiferromagnetic fluctuations, if transferred hyperfine coupling is a dominant interaction between 75As nuclei and Fe electronic spins, whereas for an on-site hyperfine coupling scenario, these are weaker, but still present to account for our experimental observations. Density-functional calculations of electric field gradient correctly reproduce the experimental values for both 75As and 7Li sites.
We compute the two-particle quantities relevant for superconducting correlations in the two-dimensional Hubbard model within the dynamical cluster approximation. In the normal state we identify the parameter regime in density, interaction, and second-nearest-neighbor hopping strength that maximizes the $d_{x^2-y^2}$ superconducting transition temperature. We find in all cases that the optimal transition temperature occurs at intermediate coupling strength, and is suppressed at strong and weak interaction strengths. Similarly, superconducting fluctuations are strongest at intermediate doping and suppressed towards large doping and half-filling. We find a change in sign of the vertex contributions to $d_{xy}$ superconductivity from repulsive near half filling to attractive at large doping. $p$-wave superconductivity is not found at the parameters we study, and $s$-wave contributions are always repulsive. For negative second-nearest-neighbor hopping the optimal transition temperature shifts towards the electron-doped side in opposition to the van Hove singularity which moves towards hole doping. We surmise that an increase of the local interaction of the electron-doped compounds would increase $T_c$.
We report on a contrasting behavior of the in-plane and out-of-plane magnetoresistance (MR) in heavily underdoped antiferromagnetic (AF) YBa_2Cu_3O_{6+x} (x<0.37). The out-of-plane MR (I//c) is positive over most of the temperature range and shows a sharp increase, by about two orders of magnitude, upon cooling through the Neel temperature T_N. A contribution associated with the AF correlations is found to dominate the out-of-plane MR behavior for H//c from far above T_N, pointing to the key role of spin fluctuations in the out-of-plane transport. In contrast, the transverse in-plane MR (I//a(b);H//c) appears to be small and smooth through T_N, implying that the development of the AF order has little effect on the in-plane resistivity.
We use neutron scattering to study vanadium (hole)-doped LiFe$_{1-x}$V$_x$As. In the undoped state, LiFeAs exhibits superconductivity at $T_c=18$ K and transverse incommensurate spin excitations similar to electron overdoped iron pnictides. Upon vanadium-doping to form LiFe$_{0.955}$V$_{0.045}$, the transverse incommensurate spin excitations in LiFeAs transform into longitudinally elongated in a similar fashion as that of potassium (hole) doped Ba$_{0.7}$K$_{0.3}$Fe$_2$As$_2$, but with dramatically enhanced magnetic scattering and elimination of superconductivity. This is different from the suppression of the overall magnetic excitations in hole doped BaFe$_2$As$_2$ and the enhancement of superconductivity near optimal hole doping. These results are consistent with density function theory plus dynamic mean field theory calculations, suggesting that vanadium-doping in LiFeAs may induce an enlarged effective magnetic moment $S_{eff}$ with a spin crossover ground state arising from the inter-orbital scattering of itinerant electrons.
The electronic structure in the normal state of CeFeAsO0.89F0.11 oxypnictide superconductors has been investigated with x-ray absorption and photoemission spectroscopy. All the data exhibit signatures of Fe d-electron itinerancy. Exchange multiplets appearing in the Fe 3s core level indicate the presence of itinerant spin fluctuations. These findings suggest that the underlying physics and the origin of superconductivity in these materials are likely to be quite different from those of the cuprate high-temperature superconductors. These materials provide opportunities for elucidating the role of magnetic fluctuations in high-temperature superconductivity.
We investigate the antiferromagnetic (AF) order in the d-wave superconducting (SC) state at high magnetic fields. A two-dimensional model with on-site repulsion U, inter-site attractive interaction V and antiferromagnetic exchange interaction J is solved using the mean field theory. For finite values of U and J, a first order transition occurs from the normal state to the FFLO state, while the FFLO-BCS phase transition is second order, consistent with the experimental results in CeCoIn_5. Although the BCS-FFLO transition is continuous, the Neel temperature of AF order is discontinuous at the phase boundary because the AF order in the FFLO state is induced by the Andreev bound state localized in the zeros of FFLO order parameter, while the AF order hardly occurs in the uniform BCS state. The spatial structure of the magnetic moment is investigated for the commensurate AF state as well as for the incommensurate AF state. The influence of the spin fluctuations is discussed for both states. Since the fluctuations are enhanced in the normal state for incommensurate AF order, this AF order can be confined in the FFLO state. The experimental results in CeCoIn_5 are discussed.