We offer an explanation for the recently observed pressure-induced magnetic state in the iron-chalcogenide FeSe based on textit{ab initio} estimates for the pressure evolution of the most important Coulomb interaction parameters. We find that an increase of pressure leads to an overall decrease mostly in the nearest-neighbor Coulomb repulsion, which in turn leads to a reduction of the nematic order and the generation of magnetic stripe order. We treat the concomitant effects of band renormalization and the induced interplay of nematic and magnetic order in a self-consistent way and determine the generic topology of the temperature-pressure phase diagram, and find qualitative agreement with the experimentally determined phase diagram.
We report the evolution of the electronic nematic susceptibility in FeSe via Raman scattering as a function of hydrostatic pressure up to 5.8 GPa where the superconducting transition temperature $T_{c}$ reaches its maximum. The critical nematic fluctuations observed at low pressure vanish above 1.6 GPa, indicating they play a marginal role in the four-fold enhancement of $T_{c}$ at higher pressures. The collapse of nematic fluctuations appears to be linked to a suppression of low energy electronic excitations which manifests itself by optical phonon anomalies at around 2 GPa, in agreement with lattice dynamical and electronic structure calculations using local density approximation combined with dynamical mean field theory. Our results reveal two different regimes of nematicity in the phase diagram of FeSe under pressure: a d-wave Pomeranchuk instability of the Fermi surface at low pressure and a magnetic driven orthorhombic distortion at higher pressure.
Magnetism induced by external pressure ($p$) was studied in a FeSe crystal sample by means of muon-spin rotation. The magnetic transition changes from second-order to first-order for pressures exceeding the critical value $p_{{rm c}}simeq2.4-2.5$ GPa. The magnetic ordering temperature ($T_{{rm N}}$) and the value of the magnetic moment per Fe site ($m_{{rm Fe}}$) increase continuously with increasing pressure, reaching $T_{{rm N}}simeq50$~K and $m_{{rm Fe}}simeq0.25$ $mu_{{rm B}}$ at $psimeq2.6$ GPa, respectively. No pronounced features at both $T_{{rm N}}(p)$ and $m_{{rm Fe}}(p)$ are detected at $psimeq p_{{rm c}}$, thus suggesting that the stripe-type magnetic order in FeSe remains unchanged above and below the critical pressure $p_{{rm c}}$. A phenomenological model for the $(p,T)$ phase diagram of FeSe reveals that these observations are consistent with a scenario where the nematic transitions of FeSe at low and high pressures are driven by different mechanisms.
FeSe is arguably the simplest, yet the most enigmatic, iron-based superconductor. Its nematic but non-magnetic ground state is unprecedented in this class of materials and stands out as a current puzzle. Here, our NMR measurements in the nematic state of mechanically detwinned FeSe reveal that both the Knight shift and the spin-lattice relaxation rate 1/T_1 possess an in-plane anisotropy opposite to that of the iron pnictides LaFeAsO and BaFe2As2. Using a microscopic electron model that includes spin-orbit coupling, our calculations show that an opposite quasiparticle weight ratio between the d_xz and d_yz orbitals leads to an opposite anisotropy of the orbital magnetic susceptibility, which explains our Knight shift results. We attribute this property to a different nature of nematic order in the two compounds, predominantly bond-type in FeSe and onsite ferro-orbital in pnictides. The T_1 anisotropy is found to be inconsistent with existing neutron scattering data in FeSe, showing that the spin fluctuation spectrum reveals surprises at low energy, possibly from fluctuations that do not break C_4 symmetry. Therefore, our results reveal that important information is hidden in these anisotropies and they place stringent constraints on the low-energy spin correlations as well as on the nature of nematicity in FeSe.
We report Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) oscillation measurements on FeSe under high pressure up to $P$ = 16.1 kbar. We find a sudden change in SdH oscillations at the onset of the pressure-induced antiferromagnetism at $P$ $sim$ 8 kbar. We argue that this change can be attributed to a reconstruction of the Fermi surface by the antiferromagnetic order. The negative d$T_c$/d$P$ observed in a range between $P$ $sim$ 8 and 12 kbar may be explained by the reduction in the density of states due to the reconstruction. The ratio of the transition temperature to the effective Fermi energy remains high under high pressure: $k_BT_c/E_F$ $sim$ 0.1 even at $P$ = 16.1 kbar.
The discovery of superconductivity in the heavy-fermion paramagnet UTe$_2$ has attracted a lot of attention, particularly due to the reinforcement of superconductivity near pressure- and magnetic-field-induced magnetic quantum phase transitions. A challenge is now to characterize the effects of combined pressure and magnetic fields applied along variable directions in this strongly anisotropic paramagnet. Here, we present an investigation of the electrical resistivity of UTe$_2$ under pressure up to 3~GPa and pulsed magnetic fields up to 58~T along the hard magnetic crystallographic directions $mathbf{b}$ and $mathbf{c}$. We construct three-dimensional phase diagrams and show that, near the critical pressure, a field-enhancement of superconductivity coincides with a boost of the effective mass related to the collapse of metamagnetic and critical fields at the boundaries of the correlated paramagnetic regime and magnetically-ordered phase, respectively. Beyond the critical pressure, field-induced transitions precede the destruction of the magnetically-ordered phase, suggesting an antiferromagnetic nature. By bringing new elements about the interplay between magnetism and superconductivity, our work appeals for microscopic theories describing the anisotropic properties of UTe$_2$ under pressure and magnetic field.