No Arabic abstract
We report on an infrared study on the undoped compound BaFe2As2 as a function of both pressure (up to about 10 GPa) at three temperatures (300, 160, and 110 K). The evolution with pressure and temperature of the optical conductivity shows that, by increasing pressure, the mid-infrared absorptions associated with magnetic order are lowered while the Drude term increases, indicating the evolution towards a conventional metallic state. We evaluate the spectral weight dependence on pressure comparing it to that previously found upon doping. The whole optical results indicate that lattice modifications can not be recognized as the only parameter determining the low-energy electrodynamics in these compounds.
The detailed optical properties of BaFe2As2 have been determined over a wide frequency range above and below the structural and magnetic transition at T_N = 138 K. A prominent in-plane infrared-active mode is observed at 253 cm^{-1} (31.4 meV) at 295 K. The frequency of this vibration shifts discontinuously at T_N; for T < T_N the frequency of this mode displays almost no temperature dependence, yet it nearly doubles in intensity. This anomalous behavior appears to be a consequence of orbital ordering in the Fe-As layers.
We report $^{115}$In nuclear-quadrupole-resonance (NQR) measurements of the pressure($P$)-induced superconductor CeRhIn$_5$ in the antiferromagnetic (AF) and superconducting (SC) states. In the AF region, the internal field $H_{int}$ at the In site is substantially reduced from $H_{int}=1.75$ kOe at P=0 to 0.39 kOe at $P=1.23$ GPa, while the Neel temperature slightly changes with increasing $P$. This suggests that either the size in the ordered moment $M_{Q}(P)$ or the angle $theta (P)$ between the direction of $M_{Q}(P)$ and the tetragonal $c$ axis is extrapolated to zero at $P^*=1.6 pm 0.1$ GPa at which a bulk SC transition is no longer emergent. In the SC state at $P=2.1$ GPa, the nuclear spin-lattice relaxation rate $^{115}(1/T_1)$ has revealed a $T^3$ dependence without the coherence peak just below $T_c$, giving evidence for the unconventional superconductivity. The dimensionality of the magnetic flutuations in the normal state are also discussed.
UCoGe is one of the few compounds showing the coexistence of ferromagnetism and superconductivity at ambient pressure. With T_Curie = 3 K and T_SC = 0.6 K it is near a quantum phase transition; the pressure needed to suppress the magnetism is slightly higher than 1 GPa. We report simultaneous resistivity and ac-susceptibility measurements under pressure on a polycrystal with very large single-crystalline domains and a resistivity ratio of about 6. Both methods confirm the phase diagram established before by resistivity measurements on a polycrystal. The ferromagnetic phase is suppressed for P approximately 1.2 GPa. Astonishingly, the superconductivity persists at pressures up to at least 2.4 GPa. In other superconducting and ferromagnetic heavy fermion compounds like UGe2 and URhGe, the superconducting state is situated only inside the larger ferromagnetic region. Therefore, UCoGe seems to be the first example where superconductivity extends from the ferromagnetic to the paramagnetic region.
We report the magnetic susceptibility and the magnetization under pressures up to 1.7GPa above the critical pressure, Pc ~ 1.5GPa, for H // a, b, c-axes in the novel spin triplet superconductor UTe2. The anisotropic magnetic susceptibility at low pressure with the easy magnetization a-axis changes to the quasi-isotropic behavior at high pressure, revealing a rapid suppression of the susceptibility for a-axis, and a gradual increase of the susceptibility for the b-axis. At 1.7GPa above Pc, magnetic anomalies are detected at T_MO ~ 3K and T_WMO ~ 10K. The former anomaly corresponds to long-range magnetic order, most likely antiferromagnetism, while the latter shows a broad anomaly, which is probably due to the development of short range order. The unusual decrease and increase of the susceptibility below T_WMO for H // a and b-axes, respectively, indicate the complex magnetic properties at low temperatures above Pc. This is related to the interplay between multiple fluctuations dominated by antiferromagnetism, ferroamgnetism, valence and Fermi surface instabilities.
We report on the pressure-induced unconventional superconductivity in the heavy-fermion antiferromagnet CeIn3 by means of nuclear-quadrupole-resonance (NQR) studies conducted under a high pressure. The temperature and pressure dependences of the NQR spectra have revealed a first-order quantum-phase transition (QPT) from an AFM to PM at a critical pressure Pc=2.46 GPa. Despite the lack of an AFM quantum critical point in the P-T phase diagram, we highlight the fact that the unconventional SC occurs in both phases of the AFM and PM. The nuclear spin-lattice relaxation rate 1/T1 in the AFM phase have provided evidence for the uniformly coexisting AFM+SC phase. In the HF-PM phase where AFM fluctuations are not developed, 1/T1 decreases without the coherence peak just below Tc, followed by a power-law like T dependence that indicates an unconventional SC with a line-node gap. Remarkably, Tc has a peak around Pc in the HF-PM phase as well as in the AFM phase. In other words, an SC dome exists with a maximum value of Tc = 230 mK around Pc, indicating that the origin of the pressure-induced HF SC in CeIn3 is not relevant to AFM spin fluctuations but to the emergence of the first-order QPT in CeIn3. When the AFM critical temperature is suppressed at the termination point of the first-order QPT, Pc = 2.46 GPa, the diverging AFM spin-density fluctuations emerge at the critical point from the AFM to PM. The results with CeIn3 leading to a new type of quantum criticality deserve further theoretical investigations.