No Arabic abstract
When passing through a phase transition, electronic system saves energy by opening energy gaps at the Fermi level. Delineating the energy gap anisotropy provides insights into the origin of the interactions that drive the phase transition. Here, we report the angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) study on the detailed gap anisotropies in both the tetragonal magnetic and superconducting phases in Sr$_{1-x}$Na$_x$Fe$_2$As$_2$. First, we found that the spin-density-wave (SDW) gap is strongly anisotropic in the tetragonal magnetic phase. The gap magnitude correlates with the orbital character of Fermi surface closely. Second, we found that the SDW gap anisotropy is isostructural to the superconducting gap anisotropy regarding to the angular dependence, gap minima locations, and relative gap magnitudes. Our results indicate that the superconducting pairing interaction and magnetic interaction share the same origin. The intra-orbital scattering plays an important role in constructing these interactions resulting in the orbital-selective magnetism and superconductivity in iron-based superconductors.
Elucidating the nature of the magnetic ground state of iron-based superconductors is of paramount importance in unveiling the mechanism behind their high temperature superconductivity. Until recently, it was thought that superconductivity emerges only from an orthorhombic antiferromagnetic stripe phase, which can in principle be described in terms of either localized or itinerant spins. However, we recently reported that tetragonal symmetry is restored inside the magnetically ordered state of a hole-doped BaFe2As2. This observation was interpreted as indirect evidence of a new double-Q magnetic structure, but alternative models of orbital order could not be ruled out. Here, we present Mossbauer data that show unambiguously that half of the iron sites in this tetragonal phase are non-magnetic, establishing conclusively the existence of a novel magnetic ground state with a non-uniform magnetization that is inconsistent with localized spins. We show that this state is naturally explained as the interference between two spin-density waves, demonstrating the itinerant character of the magnetism of these materials and the primary role played by magnetic over orbital degrees of freedom.
We use magnetic long range order as a tool to probe the Cooper pair wave function in the iron arsenide superconductors. We show theoretically that antiferromagnetism and superconductivity can coexist in these materials only if Cooper pairs form an unconventional, sign-changing state. The observation of coexistence in Ba(Fe$_{1-x}$Co$_{x}$)$_{2}$As$_{2}$ then demonstrates unconventional pairing in this material. The detailed agreement between theory and neutron diffraction experiments, in particular for the unusual behavior of the magnetic order below $T_{c}$, demonstrates the robustness of our conclusions. Our findings strongly suggest that superconductivity is unconventional in all members of the iron arsenide family.
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.
The distribution of valence electrons in metals usually follows the symmetry of an ionic lattice. Modulations of this distribution often occur when those electrons are not stable with respect to a new electronic order, such as spin or charge density waves. Electron density waves have been observed in many families of superconductors[1-3], and are often considered to be essential for superconductivity to exist[4]. Recent measurements[5-9] seem to show that the properties of the iron pnictides[10, 11] are in good agreement with band structure calculations that do not include additional ordering, implying no relation between density waves and superconductivity in those materials[12-15]. Here we report that the electronic structure of Ba1-xKxFe2As2 is in sharp disagreement with those band structure calculations[12-15], instead revealing a reconstruction characterized by a (pi,pi) wave vector. This electronic order coexists with superconductivity and persists up to room temperature.
The thermal conductivity kappa of the iron-arsenide superconductor Ba1-xKxFe2As2 was measured for heat currents parallel and perpendicular to the tetragonal c axis at temperatures down to 50 mK and in magnetic fields up to 15 T. Measurements were performed on samples with compositions ranging from optimal doping (x = 0.34; Tc = 39 K) down to dopings deep into the region where antiferromagnetic order coexists with superconductivity (x = 0.16; Tc = 7 K). In zero field, there is no residual linear term in kappa(T) as T goes to 0 at any doping, whether for in-plane or inter-plane transport. This shows that there are no nodes in the superconducting gap. However, as x decreases into the range of coexistence with antiferromagnetism, the residual linear term grows more and more rapidly with applied magnetic field. This shows that the superconducting energy gap develops minima at certain locations on the Fermi surface and these minima deepen with decreasing x. We propose that the minima in the gap structure arise when the Fermi surface of Ba1-xKxFe2As2 is reconstructed by the antiferromagnetic order.