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Register a new userVisualizing Uniaxial-strain Manipulation of Antiferromagnetic Domains in Fe1+YTe Using a Spin-polarized Scanning Tunneling Microscope
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The quest to understand correlated electronic systems has pushed the frontiers of experimental measurements toward the development of new experimental techniques and methodologies. Here we use a novel home-built uniaxial-strain device integrated into our variable temperature scanning tunneling microscope that enables us to controllably manipulate in-plane uniaxial strain in samples and probe their electronic response at the atomic scale. Using scanning tunneling microscopy with spin-polarization techniques, we visualize antiferromagnetic domains and their atomic structure in Fe1+yTe samples, the parent compound of iron-based superconductors, and demonstrate how these domains respond to applied uniaxial strain. We observe the bidirectional antiferromagnetic domains in the unstrained sample, with an average domain size of 50 to 150 nm, to transition into a single unidirectional domain under applied uniaxial strain. The findings presented here open a new direction to utilize a valuable tuning parameter in scanning tunneling microscopy, as well as other spectroscopic techniques, both for tuning the electronic properties as for inducing symmetry breaking in quantum material systems.
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An electronic nematic state spontaneously breaks a point-group symmetry of an underlying lattice. As a result, the nematic-isotropic transition accompanies a Fermi surface distortion. However, the anisotropic nature of the nematic state at a macroscopic scale can be easily wiped out when domains of different orientations of nematic order exist. We suggest that a spatial pattern of local density of states (LDOS) in the presence of a non-magnetic impurity can be a direct probe of the nematic order. We study various patterns of LDOS across the quantum phase transition between the isotropic and nematic phases. Especially the Fourier transformed local density of states (FT-LDOS), which can be deduced from scanning tunneling microscope images, represent a transparent symmetry of an electronic structure. The application of our results to the bilayer ruthenate, Sr$_3$Ru$_2$O$_7$ is also discussed.
We report on temperature-dependent soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) measurements utilizing linearly polarized synchrotron radiation to probe magnetic phase transitions in iron-rich Fe1+yTe. X-ray magnetic linear dichroism (XMLD) signals, which sense magnetic ordering processes at surfaces, start to increase monotonically below the Neel temperature TN = 57 K. This increase is due to a progressive bicollinear antiferromagnetic (AFM) alignment of Fe spins of the monoclinic Fe1+yTe parent phase. This AFM alignment was achieved by a [100]-oriented biasing field favoring a single-domain state during cooling across TN. Our specific heat and magnetization measurements confirm the bulk character of this AFM phase transition. On longer time scales, however, we observe that the field-biased AFM state is highly unstable even at the lowest temperature of T = 3 K. After switching off the biasing field, the XMLD signal decays exponentially with a time constant {tau} = 1506 s. The initial XMLD signal is restored only upon repeating a cycle consisting of heating and field-cooling through TN. We explain the time effect by a gradual formation of a multi-domain state with 90 deg rotated AFM domains, promoted by structural disorder, facilitating the motion of twin-domains. Significant disorder in our Fe1+yTe sample is evident from our X-ray diffraction and specific heat data. The stability of magnetic phases in Fe-chalcogenides is an important material property, since the Fe(Te1-xSex) phase diagram shows magnetism intimately connected with superconductivity.
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A simple, reliable method for preparation of bulk Cr tips for Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) is proposed and its potentialities in performing high-quality and high-resolution STM and Spin Polarized-STM (SP-STM) are investigated. Cr tips show atomic resolution on ordered surfaces. Contrary to what happens with conventional W tips, rest atoms of the Si(111)-7x7 reconstruction can be routinely observed, probably due to a different electronic structure of the tip apex. SP-STM measurements of the Cr(001) surface showing magnetic contrast are reported. Our results reveal that the peculiar properties of these tips can be suited in a number of STM experimental situations.
Electronic nematic phases have been proposed to occur in various correlated electron systems and were recently claimed to have been detected in scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) conductance maps of the pseudogap states of the cuprate high-temperature superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x (Bi-2212). We investigate the influence of anisotropic STM tip structures on such measurements and establish, with a model calculation, the presence of a tunneling interference effect within an STM junction that induces energy-dependent symmetry-breaking features in the conductance maps. We experimentally confirm this phenomenon on different correlated electron systems, including measurements in the pseudogap state of Bi-2212, showing that the apparent nematic behavior of the imaged crystal lattice is likely not due to nematic order but is related to how a realistic STM tip probes the band structure of a material. We further establish that this interference effect can be used as a sensitive probe of changes in the momentum structure of the samples quasiparticles as a function of energy.
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