No Arabic abstract
The FeSe-based superconductors exhibit a wide range of critical temperature Tc under a variety of material and physical conditions, but extensive studies to date have yet to produce a consensus view on the underlying mechanism. Here we report on a systematic Raman scattering work on intercalated FeSe superconductors Lix(NH3)yFe2Se2 and (Li,Fe)OHFeSe compared to pristine FeSe. All three crystals show an anomalous power-law temperature dependence of phonon linewidths, deviating from the standard anharmonic behavior. This intriguing phenomenon is attributed to electron-phonon coupling effects enhanced by electron correlation, as evidenced by the evolution of the A1g Raman mode. Meanwhile, an analysis of the B1g mode, which probes the out-of-plane vibration of Fe, reveals a lack of influence by previously suggested structural parameters, and instead indicates a crucial role of the joint density of states in determining Tc. These findings identify carrier doping as the direct factor driving and modulating superconductivity in FeSe-based compounds.
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 report Raman scattering measurement of charge nematic fluctuations in the tetragonal phase of BaFe$_2$As$_2$ and Sr(Fe$_{1-x}$Co$_x$)$_2$As$_2$ (x=0.04) single crystals. In both systems, the observed nematic fluctuations are found to exhibit divergent Curie-Weiss like behavior with very similar characteristic temperature scales, indicating a universal tendency towards charge nematic order in 122 iron-based superconductors.
The superconducting phase of the $mathrm{HgBa}_2mathrm{CuO}_{4+delta}$ (Hg-1201) and $mathrm{HgBa}_2mathrm{Ca}_2mathrm{Cu}_3mathrm{O}_{8+delta}$ (Hg-1223) cuprates has been investigated by Raman spectroscopy under hydrostatic pressure. Our analysis reveals that the increase of $T_c$ with pressure is slower in Hg-1223 cuprate compared to the Hg-1201 due to a charge carrier concentration imbalance (accentuated by pressure) between the $mathrm{CuO}_2$ layers of Hg-1223. We find that the energy variation under pressure of the apical oxygen mode from which the charge carriers are transferred to the $mathrm{CuO}_2$ layers, is the same for both the Hg-1223 and Hg-1223 cuprates and it is controlled by the inter-layer compressibility. At last, we show that the binding energy of the Cooper pairs related to the maximum amplitude of the $d-$ wave superconducting gap at the anti-nodes, does not follow $T_c$ with pressure. It decreases while $T_c$ increases. In the particular case of Hg-1201, the binding energy collapses from 10 to 2 $K_B T_c$ as the pressure increases up to 10 GPa. These direct spectroscopic observations joined to the fact that the binding energy of the Cooper pairs at the anti-nodes does not follow $T_c$ either with doping, raises the question of its link with the pseudogap energy scale which follows the same trend with doping.
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.
Electron-phonon coupling (EPC) is one of the most common and fundamental interactions in solids. It not only dominates many basic dynamic processes like resistivity, thermal conductivity etc, but also provides the pairing glue in conventional superconductors. But in high-temperature superconductors (HTSC), it is still controversial whether or not EPC is in favor of paring. Despite the controversies, many experiments have provided clear evidence for EPC in HTSC. In this paper, we briefly review EPC in cuprate and iron-based superconducting systems revealed by Raman scattering. We introduce how to extract the coupling information through phonon lineshape. Then we discuss the strength of EPC in different HTSC systems and possible factors affecting the strength. The comparative study between Raman phonon theories and experiments allows us to gain insight into some crucial electronic properties, especially superconductivity. Finally we summarize and compare EPC in the two existing HTSC systems, and discuss what role it may play in HTSC.