No Arabic abstract
We systematically investigated the anisotropic in-plane resistivity of the iron telluride including three kinds of impurity atoms: excess Fe, Se substituted for Te, and Cu substituted for Fe. Sizable resistivity anisotropy was found in the magneto-structurally ordered phase whereas the sign is opposite ($rho_a$ $>$ $rho_b$, where the $b$-axis parameter is shorter than the $a$-axis one) to that observed in the transition-metal doped iron arsenides ($rho_a$ $<$ $rho_b$). On the other hand, our results demonstrate that the magnitude of the resistivity anisotropy in the iron tellurides is correlated with the amount of impurities, implying that the resistivity anisotropy originates from an exotic impurity effect like that in the iron arsenides. This suggests that the anisotropic carrier scattering by impurities is a universal phenomenon in the magneto-structurally ordered phase of the iron-based materials.
We theoretically examine anisotropy of in-plane resistivity in the striped antiferromagnetic phase of an iron arsenide superconductor by applying a memory function approach to the ordered phase with isotropic nonmagnetic impurity. We find that the anisotropy of the scattering rate is independent of carrier density when the topology of the Fermi surface is changed after the introduction of holes. On the other hand, the anisotropy of the Drude weight monotonically decreases reflecting the distortion of the Dirac Fermi surface and eventually leads to the reverse of anisotropy of resistivity, being consistent with experiment. The origin of the anisotropy is thus attributed to the interplay of impurity scattering and anisotropic electronic states.
We consider the role of potential scatterers in the nematic phase of Fe-based superconductors above the transition temperature to the (pi,0) magnetic state but below the orthorhombic structural transition. The anisotropic spin fluctuations in this region can be frozen by disorder, to create elongated magnetic droplets whose anisotropy grows as the magnetic transition is approached. Such states act as strong anisotropic defect potentials which scatter with much higher probability perpendicular to their length than parallel, although the actual crystal symmetry breaking is tiny. We calculate the scattering potentials, relaxation rates, and conductivity in this region, and show that such emergent defect states are essential for the transport anisotropy observed in experiments.
We investigated the in-plane resistivity anisotropy for underdoped Ba(Fe$_{1-x}$Co$_x$)$_2$As$_2$ single crystals with improved quality. We demonstrate that the anisotropy in resistivity in the magnetostructural ordered phase arises from the anisotropy in the residual component which increases in proportion to the Co concentration $x$. This gives evidence that the anisotropy originates from the impurity scattering by Co atoms substituted for the Fe sites, rather than so far proposed mechanism such as the anisotropy of Fermi velocities of reconstructed Fermi surface pockets. As doping proceeds to the paramagnetic-tetragonal phase, a Co impurity transforms to a weak and isotropic scattering center.
We examine the optical conductivity in antiferromagnetic (AFM) iron pnictides by mean-field calculation in a five-band Hubbard model. The calculated spectra are well consistent with the in-plane anisotropy observed in the measurements, where the optical conductivity along the direction with the AFM alignment of neighboring spins is larger than that along the ferromagnetic (FM) direction in the low-energy region; however, that along the FM direction becomes larger in the higher-energy region. The difference between the two directions is explained by taking account of orbital characters in both occupied and unoccupied states as well as of the nature of Dirac-type linear dispersions near the Fermi level.
Measurements of the nonlinear flux-flow resistivity $rho$ and the critical vortex velocity $rm v^*_phi$ at high voltage bias close to the instability regime predicted by Larkin and Ovchinnikov cite{LO} are reported along the node and antinode directions of the d-wave order parameter in the textit{a-b} plane of epitaxial $YBa_2Cu_3O_{7-delta}$ films. In this pinning-free regime, $rho$ and $rm v^*_phi$ are found to be anisotropic with values in the node direction larger on average by 10% than in the antinode direction. The anisotropy of $rho$ is almost independent of temperature and field. We attribute the observed results to the anisotropic quasiparticle distribution on the Fermi surface of $YBa_2Cu_3O_{7-delta}$.