No Arabic abstract
The possibility of p-wave pairing in superconductors has been proposed more than five decades ago, but has not yet been convincingly demonstrated. One difficulty is that some p-wave states are thermodynamically indistinguishable from s-wave, while others are very similar to d-wave states. Here we studied the self-field critical current of NdFeAs(O,F) thin films in order to extract absolute values of the London penetration depth, the superconducting energy gap, and the relative jump in specific heat at the superconducting transition temperature, and find that all the deduced physical parameters strongly indicate that NdFeAs(O,F) is a bulk p-wave superconductor. Further investigation revealed that single atomic layer FeSe also shows p-wave pairing. In an attempt to generalize these findings, we re-examined the whole inventory of superfluid density measurements in iron-based superconductors show quite generally that most of the iron-based superconductors are p-wave superconductors.
In iron-based superconductors, a spin-density-wave (SDW) magnetic order is suppressed with doping and unconventional superconductivity appears in close proximity to the SDW instability. The optical response of the SDW order shows clear gap features: substantial suppression in the low-frequency optical conductivity, alongside a spectral weight transfer from low to high frequencies. Here, we study the detailed temperature dependence of the optical response in three different series of the Ba122 system [Ba$_{1-x}$K$_{x}$Fe$_{2}$As$_{2}$, Ba(Fe$_{1-x}$Co$_{x}$)$_{2}$As$_{2}$ and BaFe$_{2}$(As$_{1-x}$P$_{x}$)$_{2}$]. Intriguingly, we found that the suppression of the low-frequency optical conductivity and spectral weight transfer appear at a temperature $T^{ast}$ much higher than the SDW transition temperature $T_{SDW}$. Since this behavior has the same optical feature and energy scale as the SDW order, we attribute it to SDW fluctuations. Furthermore, $T^{ast}$ is suppressed with doping, closely following the doping dependence of the nematic fluctuations detected by other techniques. These results suggest that the magnetic and nematic orders have an intimate relationship, in favor of the magnetic-fluctuation-driven nematicity scenario in iron-based superconductors.
Iron-based superconducting layered compounds have the second highest transition temperature after cuprate superconductors. Their discovery is a milestone in the history of high-temperature superconductivity and will have profound implications for high-temperature superconducting mechanism as well as industrial applications. Raman scattering has been extensively applied to correlated electron systems including the new superconductors due to its unique ability to probe multiple primary excitations and their coupling. In this review, we will give a brief summary of the existing Raman experiments in the iron-based materials and their implication for pairing mechanism in particular. And we will also address some open issues from the experiments.
We examine the relevance of several major material-dependent parameters to the magnetic softness in iron-base superconductors by first-principles electronic structure analysis of their parent compounds. The results are explained in the spin-fermion model where localized spins and orbitally degenerate itinerant electrons coexist and are coupled by Hunds rule coupling. We found that the difference in the strength of the Hunds rule coupling term is the major material-dependent microscopic parameter for determining the ground-state spin pattern. The magnetic softness in iron-based superconductors is essentially driven by the competition between the double-exchange ferromagnetism and the superexchange antiferromagnetism.
Effects of disorder on electron-doped iron pnictides are investigated systematically based on self-consistent Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations. Multiply impurities with same scattering potential (SP) are randomly distributed in a square lattice. Probability distribution functions of normalized order parameters for different impurity concentrations $delta_{imp}$, different electron doping concentrations $delta$ are investigated for given SPs. Samples are found to be very robust against weak SP, in which order parameters do not have qualitative change even at very large $delta_{imp}$. While strong SP is able to easily break down the order parameters. For moderate SP, variations of order parameters on and around impurities strongly depend on $delta$, however the distribution functions of normalized order parameters have similar behavior as $delta_{imp}$ increases. Compared with superconducting (SC) order, the magnetic order is more sensitive to multi-impurity effect. The spatial spin density wave pattern has already been destroyed before the system loses its superconductivity. Dependence of SC order on temperature is similar to that of impurity-free case, with the critical temperature being remarkably suppressed for high $delta_{imp}$.
The varying metallic antiferromagnetic correlations observed in iron-based superconductors are unified in a model consisting of both itinerant electrons and localized spins. The decisive factor is found to be the sensitive competition between the superexchange antiferromagnetism and the orbital-degenerate double-exchange ferromagnetism. Our results reveal the crucial role of Hunds rule coupling for the strongly correlated nature of the system and suggest that the iron-based superconductors are closer kin to manganites than cuprates in terms of their diverse magnetism and incoherent normal-state electron transport. This unified picture would be instrumental for exploring other exotic properties and the mechanism of superconductivity in this new class of superconductors.