No Arabic abstract
Study of Fe based compounds have drawn much attention due to the discovery of superconductivity as well as many other exotic electronic properties. Here, we review some of our works in these materials carried out employing density functional theory and angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy. The results presented here indicate that the dimensionality of the underlying electronic structure plays important role in deriving their interesting electronic properties. The nematicity found in most of these materials appears to be related to the magnetic long range order. We argue that the exoticity in the electronic properties are related to the subtlety in competing structural and magnetic instabilities present in these materials.
In correlated electrons system, quantum melting of electronic crystalline phase often gives rise to many novel electronic phases. In cuprates superconductors, melting the Mott insulating phase with carrier doping leads to a quantum version of liquid crystal phase, the electronic nematicity, which breaks the rotational symmetry and exhibits a tight twist with high-temperature superconductivity. Recently, the electronic nematicity has also been observed in Fe-based superconductors. However, whether it shares a similar scenario with its cuprates counterpart is still elusive. Here, by measuring nuclear magnetic resonance in CsFe2As2, a prototypical Fe-based superconductor perceived to have evolved from a Mott insulating phase at 3d5 configuration, we report anisotropic quadruple broadening effect as a direct result of local rotational symmetry breaking. For the first time, clear connection between the Mott insulating phase and the electronic nematicity can be established and generalized to the Fe-based superconductors. This finding would promote a universal understanding on electronic nematicity and its relation with high-temperature superconductivity.
Larkin-Ovchinnikov superconducting state has spontaneous modulation of Cooper pair density, while Fulde-Ferrell state has a spontaneous modulation in the phase of the order parameter. We report that a quasi-two-dimensional Dirac metal, under certain conditions has principally different inhomogeneous superconducting states that by contrast have spontaneous modulation in a submanifold of a multiple-symmetries-breaking order parameter. The first state we find can be viewed as a nematic superconductor where the nematicity vector spontaneously breaks rotational and translational symmetries due to spatial modulation. The other demonstrated state is a chiral superconductor with spontaneously broken time-reversal and translational symmetries. It is characterized by an order parameter, which forms a lattice pattern of alternating chiralities.
We analyze antiferromagnetism and superconductivity in novel $Fe-$based superconductors within the itinerant model of small electron and hole pockets near $(0,0)$ and $(pi,pi)$. We argue that the effective interactions in both channels logarithmically flow towards the same values at low energies, {it i.e.}, antiferromagnetism and superconductivity must be treated on equal footings. The magnetic instability comes first for equal sizes of the two pockets, but looses to superconductivity upon doping. The superconducting gap has no nodes, but changes sign between the two Fermi surfaces (extended s-wave symmetry). We argue that the $T$ dependencies of the spin susceptibility and NMR relaxation rate for such state are exponential only at very low $T$, and can be well fitted by power-laws over a wide $T$ range below $T_c$.
Superconductivity has been discovered recently in nickel based 112 infinite thin films $R_{1-x}$A$_x$NiO$_2$ ($R$ = La, Nd, Pr and A = Sr, Ca). They are isostructural to the infinite-layer cuprate (Ca,Sr)CuO$_2$ and are supposed to have a formal Ni 3$d^9$ valence, thus providing a new platform to study the unconventional pairing mechanism of high-temperature superconductors. This important discovery immediately triggers a huge amount of innovative scientific curiosity in the field. In this paper, we try to give an overview of the recent research progress on the newly found superconducting nickelate systems, both from experimental and theoretical aspects. We will focus mainly on the electronic structures, magnetic excitations, phase diagrams, superconducting gaps and finally make some open discussions for possible pairing symmetries in Ni based 112 systems.
Elucidating the microscopic origin of nematic order in iron-based superconducting materials is important because the interactions that drive nematic order may also mediate the Cooper pairing. Nematic order breaks fourfold rotational symmetry in the iron plane, which is believed to be driven by either orbital or spin degrees of freedom. However, as the nematic phase often develops at a temperature just above or coincides with a stripe magnetic phase transition, experimentally determining the dominant driving force of nematic order is difficult. Here, we use neutron scattering to study structurally the simplest iron-based superconductor FeSe, which displays a nematic (orthorhombic) phase transition at $T_s=90$ K, but does not order antiferromagnetically. Our data reveal substantial stripe spin fluctuations, which are coupled with orthorhombicity and are enhanced abruptly on cooling to below $T_s$. Moreover, a sharp spin resonance develops in the superconducting state, whose energy (~4 meV) is consistent with an electron boson coupling mode revealed by scanning tunneling spectroscopy, thereby suggesting a spin fluctuation-mediated sign-changing pairing symmetry. By normalizing the dynamic susceptibility into absolute units, we show that the magnetic spectral weight in FeSe is comparable to that of the iron arsenides. Our findings support recent theoretical proposals that both nematicity and superconductivity are driven by spin fluctuations.