No Arabic abstract
La$_{0.4}$Na$_{0.6}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ single crystals have been grown out of an NaAs flux in an alumina crucible and characterized by measuring magnetic susceptibility, electrical resistivity, specific heat, as well as single crystal x-ray and neutron diffraction. La$_{0.4}$Na$_{0.6}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ single crystals show a structural phase transition from a high temperature tetragonal phase to a low-temperature orthorhombic phase at T$_s$,=,125,K. This structural transition is accompanied by an anomaly in the temperature dependence of electrical resistivity, anisotropic magnetic susceptibility, and specific heat. Concomitant with the structural phase transition, the Fe moments order along the emph{a} direction with an ordered moment of 0.7(1),$mu_{textup{B}}$ at emph{T},=,5 K. The low temperature stripe antiferromagnetic structure is the same as that in other emph{A}Fe$_{2}$As$_{2}$ (emph{A},=,Ca, Sr, Ba) compounds. La$_{0.5-x}$Na$_{0.5+x}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ provides a new material platform for the study of iron-based superconductors where the electron-hole asymmetry could be studied by simply varying La/Na ratio.
We have successfully grown high quality single crystals of SrFe$_2$As$_2$ and A$_{0.6}$K$_{0.4}$Fe$_2$As$_2$(A=Sr, Ba) using flux method. The resistivity, specific heat and Hall coefficient have been measured. For parent compound SrFe$_2$As$_2$, an anisotropic resistivity with $rho_c$ / $rho_{ab}$ as large as 130 is obtained at low temperatures. A sharp drop in both in-plane and out-plane resistivity due to the SDW instability is observed below 200 K. The angular dependence of in-plane magnetoresistance shows 2-fold symmetry with field rotating within ab plane below SDW transition temperature. This is consistent with a stripe-type spin ordering in SDW state. In K doped A$_{0.6}$K$_{0.4}$Fe$_2$As$_2$(A=Sr. Ba), the SDW instability is suppressed and the superconductivity appears with T$_c$ above 35 K. The rather low anisotropy in upper critical field between H$parallel$ab and H$parallel$c indicates inter-plane coupling play an important role in hole doped Fe-based superconductors.
Pairing symmetry which characterizes the superconducting pairing mechanism is normally determined by measuring the superconducting gap structure ($|Delta_k|$). Here, we report the measurement of a strain-induced gap modulation ($partial|Delta_k|$) in uniaxially strained Ba$_{0.6}$K$_{0.4}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ utilizing angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and $in$-$situ$ strain-tuning. We found that the uniaxial strain drives Ba$_{0.6}$K$_{0.4}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ into a nematic superconducting state which breaks the four-fold rotational symmetry of the superconducting pairing. The superconducting gap increases on the $d_{yz}$ electron and hole pockets while it decreases on the $d_{xz}$ counterparts. Such orbital selectivity indicates that orbital-selective pairing exists intrinsically in non-nematic iron-based superconductors. The $d_{xz}$ and $d_{yz}$ pairing channels are balanced originally in the pristine superconducting state, but become imbalanced under uniaxial strain. Our results highlight the important role of intra-orbital scattering in mediating the superconducting pairing in iron-based superconductors. It also highlights the measurement of $partial|Delta_k|$ as an effective way to characterize the superconducting pairing from a perturbation perspective.
We measured the in-plane resistivity anisotropy in the underdoped Ca$_{1-x}$Na$_x$Fe$_2$As$_2$ single crystals. The anisotropy (indicated by $rho_{rm b} - rho_{rm a}$) appears below a temperature well above magnetic transition temperature $T_{rm N}$, being positive ($rho_{rm b} - rho_{rm a} > 0$) as $xleq$ 0.14. With increasing the doping level to $x$ = 0.19, an intersection between $rho_{rm b}$ and $rho_{rm a}$ is observed upon cooling, with $rho_{rm b} - rho_{rm a} < 0$ at low-temperature deep inside a magnetically ordered state, while $rho_{rm b} - rho_{rm a}> 0$ at high temperature. Subsequently, further increase of hole concentration leads to a negative anisotropy $rho_{rm b} - rho_{rm a} < 0$ in the whole temperature range. These results manifest that the anisotropic behavior of resistivity in the magnetically ordered state depends strongly on the competition of the contributions from different mechanisms, and the competition between the two contributions results in a complicated evolution of the anisotropy of in-plane resistivity with doping level.
We report a detailed investigation on the lower critical field $H_{c1}$ of the superconducting Ba$_{0.6}$K$_{0.4}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ (FeAs-122) single crystals. A pronounced kink is observed on the $H_{c1}(T)$ curve, which is attributed to the existence of two superconducting gaps. By fitting the data $H_{c1}(T)$ to the two-gap BCS model in full temperature region, a small gap of $Delta_a(0)=2.0pm 0.3$ meV and a large gap of $Delta_b(0)=8.9pm 0.4$ meV are obtained. The in-plane penetration depth $lambda_{ab}(0)$ is estimated to be 105 nm corresponding to a rather large superfluid density, which points to the breakdown of the Uemura plot in FeAs-122 superconductors.
We use inelastic light scattering to study Sr$_{1-x}$Na$_x$Fe$_2$As$_2$ ($xapprox0.34$), which exhibits a robust tetragonal magnetic phase that restores the four-fold rotation symmetry inside the orthorhombic magnetic phase. With cooling, we observe splitting and recombination of an $E_g$ phonon peak upon entering the orthorhombic and tetragonal magnetic phases, respectively, consistent with the reentrant phase behavior. Our electronic Raman data reveal a pronounced feature that is clearly associated with the tetragonal magnetic phase, suggesting the opening of an electronic gap. No phonon back-folding behavior can be detected above the noise level, which implies that any lattice translation symmetry breaking in the tetragonal magnetic phase must be very weak.