No Arabic abstract
Recent discoveries of charge order and electronic nematic order in the iron-based superconductors and cuprates have pointed towards the possibility of nematic and charge fluctuations playing a role in the enhancement of superconductivity. The Ba1-xSrxNi2As2 system, closely related in structure to the BaFe2As2 system, has recently been shown to exhibit both types of ordering without the presence of any magnetic order. We report single crystal X-ray diffraction, resistance transport measurements, and magnetization of BaSrLate, providing evidence that the previously reported incommensurate charge order with wavevector $(0,0.28,0)_{tet}$ in the tetragonal state of BaNi~vanishes by this concentration of Sr substitution together with nematic order. Our measurements suggest that the nematic and incommensurate charge orders are closely tied in the tetragonal state, and show that the $(0,0.33,0)_{tri}$ charge ordering in the triclinic phase of BaNi2As2 evolves to become $(0,0.5,0)_{tri}$ charge ordering at $x$=0.65 before vanishing at $x$=0.71.
We study a spin $S$ quantum Heisenberg model on the Fe lattice of the rare-earth oxypnictide superconductors. Using both large $S$ and large $N$ methods, we show that this model exhibits a sequence of two phase transitions: from a high temperature symmetric phase to a narrow region of intermediate ``nematic phase, and then to a low temperature spin ordered phase. Identifying phases by their broken symmetries, these phases correspond precisely to the sequence of structural (tetragonal to monoclinic) and magnetic transitions that have been recently revealed in neutron scattering studies of LaOFeAs. The structural transition can thus be identified with the existence of incipient (``fluctuating) magnetic order.
It is shown by detailed inelastic neutron scattering experiments that the gapped collective magnetic excitation of the unconventional superconductor CeCoIn$_{5}$, the spin resonance mode, is incommensurate and that the corresponding fluctuations are of Ising nature. The incommensurate peak position of these fluctuations corresponds to the propagation vector of the adjacent field induced static magnetic ordered phase, the so-called Q-phase. Furthermore, the direction of the magnetic moment fluctuations is also the direction of the ordered magnetic moments of the Q-phase. Hence the resonance mode and the Q-phase share the same symmetry and this strongly supports a scenario where the static order is realized by a condensation of the magnetic excitation.
Novel electronic states resulting from entangled spin and orbital degrees of freedom are hallmarks of strongly correlated f-electron systems. A spectacular example is the so-called hidden-order phase transition in the heavy-electron metal URu2Si2, which is characterized by the huge amount of entropy lost at T_{HO}=17.5K. However, no evidence of magnetic/structural phase transition has been found below T_{HO} so far. The origin of the hidden-order phase transition has been a long-standing mystery in condensed matter physics. Here, based on a first-principles theoretical approach, we examine the complete set of multipole correlations allowed in this material. The results uncover that the hidden-order parameter is a rank-5 multipole (dotriacontapole) order with nematic E^- symmetry, which exhibits staggered pseudospin moments along the [110] direction. This naturally provides comprehensive explanations of all key features in the hidden-order phase including anisotropic magnetic excitations, nearly degenerate antiferromagnetic-ordered state, and spontaneous rotational-symmetry breaking.
There are increasing indications that superconductivity competes with other orders in cuprate superconductors, but obtaining direct evidence with bulk-sensitive probes is challenging. We have used resonant soft x-ray scattering to identify two-dimensional charge fluctuations with an incommensurate periodicity of $bf sim 3.2$ lattice units in the copper-oxide planes of the superconductors (Y,Nd)Ba$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{6+x}$ with hole concentrations $0.09 leq p leq 0.13$ per planar Cu ion. The intensity and correlation length of the fluctuation signal increase strongly upon cooling down to the superconducting transition temperature, $T_c$; further cooling below $T_c$ abruptly reverses the divergence of the charge correlations. In combination with prior observations of a large gap in the spin excitation spectrum, these data indicate an incipient charge-density-wave instability that competes with superconductivity.
The momentum dependence of the nematic order parameter is an important ingredient in the microscopic description of iron-based high-temperature superconductors. While recent reports on FeSe indicate that the nematic order parameter changes sign between electron and hole bands, detailed knowledge is still missing for other compounds. Combining angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) with uniaxial strain tuning, we measure the nematic band splitting in both FeSe and BaFe$_2$As$_2$ without interference from either twinning or magnetic order. We find that the nematic order parameter exhibits the same momentum dependence in both compounds with a sign change between the Brillouin center and the corner. This suggests that the same microscopic mechanism drives the nematic order in spite of the very different phase diagrams.