No Arabic abstract
We investigate the importance of superconducting order parameter fluctuations in the 122 family of Fe-based superconductors, using high-resolution specific heat and thermal expansion data of various Ba$_{1-x}$K$_x$Fe$_2$As$_2$ single crystals covering a large range of the phase diagram from the strongly underdoped to the overdoped regime. By applying scaling relations of the 3d-XY and the 3d-Lowest-Landau-Level (3d-LLL) fluctuation models to data measured in different magnetic fields, we demonstrate that a strong increase of the critical fluctuation regime is responsible for the transition broadening in magnetic fields, which is a direct consequence of a magnetic-field-induced finite size effect due to a reduction of the effective dimensionality by a decreasing magnetic length scale related to the mean vortex separation and the confinement of quasiparticles in low Landau levels. The fluctuations are stronger in the underdoped and overdoped regimes and appear to be weakest at optimal doping.
In-plane resistivity measurements as a function of temperature and magnetic field up to 35~T with precise orientation within the crystallographic $ac-$plane were used to study the upper critical field, $H_{c2}$, of the hole-doped iron-based superconductor Ba$_{1-x}$K$_x$Fe$_2$As$_2$. Compositions of the samples studied were spanning from underdoped $x=$0.17 ($T_c$=12~K) and $x$=0.22 ($T_c$=20~K), both in the coexistence range of stripe magnetism and superconductivity, though optimal doping $x$=0.39 ($T_c$=38.4~K), $x$=0.47 ($T_c$=37.2~K), to overdoped $x$=0.65 ($T_c$=22~K), $x$=0.83 ($T_c$=10~K). We find notable doping asymmetry of the shapes of the anisotropic $H_{c2}(T)$ suggesting important role of paramagnetic limiting effects in $H parallel a$ configuration in overdoped compositions and multi-band effects in underdoped compositions.
The precise momentum dependence of the superconducting gap in the iron-arsenide superconductor with Tc = 32K (BKFA) was determined from angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) via fitting the distribution of the quasiparticle density to a model. The model incorporates finite lifetime and experimental resolution effects, as well as accounts for peculiarities of BKFA electronic structure. We have found that the value of the superconducting gap is practically the same for the inner Gamma-barrel, X-pocket, and blade-pocket, and equals 9 meV, while the gap on the outer Gamma-barrel is estimated to be less than 4 meV, resulting in 2Delta/kT_c=6.8 for the large gap, and 2Delta/kT_c<3 for the small gap. A large (77 pm 3%) non-superconducting component in the photoemission signal is observed below T_c. Details of gap extraction from ARPES data are discussed in Appendix.
The electron band around $M$ point in (Ba$_{1-x}$K$_x$)Fe$_2$As$_2$ compound -- completely lifted above the Fermi level for $x > 0.7$ and hence has no Fermi Surface (FS) -- can still form an isotropic s-wave gap ($Delta_e$) and it is the main pairing resource generating an s-wave gap ($Delta_h$) with an opposite sign on the hole pocket around $Gamma$ point. The electron band developing the SC order parameter $Delta_e$ but having no FS displays a {it shadow gap} feature which will be easily detected by various experimental probes such as angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and scanning tunneling microscope (STM). Finally, the formation of the nodal gap $Delta_{nodal}$ with $A_{1g}$ symmetry on the other hole pocket with a larger FS is stabilized due to the balance of the interband pairing interactions from the main hole band gap $Delta_h=+Delta$ and the hidden electron band gap $Delta_e = -Delta$.
We report inelastic x-ray scattering measurements of the in-plane polarized transverse acoustic phonon mode propagating along $qparallel$[100] in various hole-doped compounds belonging to the 122 family of iron-based superconductors. The slope of the dispersion of this phonon mode is proportional to the square root of the shear modulus $C_{66}$ in the $q rightarrow 0$ limit and, hence, sensitive to the tetragonal-to-orthorhombic structural phase transition occurring in these compounds. In contrast to a recent report for Ba(Fe$_{0.94}$Co$_{0.06}$)$_2$As$_2$ [F. Weber et al., Phys. Rev. B 98, 014516 (2018)], we find qualitative agreement between values of $C_{66}$ deduced from our experiments and those derived from measurements of the Youngs modulus in Ba$_{1-x}$(K,Na)$_x$Fe$_2$As$_2$ at optimal doping. These results provide an upper limit of about 50 {AA} for the nematic correlation length for the optimally hole-doped compounds. Furthermore, we also studied compounds at lower doping levels exhibiting the orthorhombic magnetic phase, where $C_{66}$ is not accessible by volume probes, as well as the C4 tetragonal magnetic phase.investigated
The temperature dependent resistivity of Ba$_{1-x}$K$_x$Fe$_2$As$_2$ (x = 0.23, 0.25, 0.28 and 0.4) single crystals and the angle dependent resistivity of superconducting Ba$_{0.6}$K$_{0.4}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ single crystals were measured in magnetic fields up to 9 T. The measurements of temperature dependent resistivity for samples with different doping levels revealed very high upper critical fields which increase with the transition temperature monotonously, and a very low superconducting anisotropy ratio $Gamma=H_{c2}^{ab}/H_{c2}^c approx$ 2. By scaling the resistivity in the frame of the anisotropic Ginzburg-Landau theory, the angle dependent resistivity of the Ba$_{0.6}$K$_{0.4}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ single crystal measured with different magnetic fields at a certain temperature collapsed onto one curve. As the only scaling parameter, the anisotropy $Gamma$ was determined alternatively for each temperature and was found to be between two and three.