64 research outputs found
Crossover from weak to strong pairing in unconventional superconductors
Superconductors are classified by their pairing mechanism and the coupling
strength, measured as the ratio of the energy gap to the critical temperature,
Tc. We present an extensive comparison of the gap ratios among many single- and
multiband superconductors from simple metals to high-Tc cuprates and iron
pnictides. Contrary to the recently suggested universality of this ratio in
Fe-based superconductors, we find that the coupling in pnictides ranges from
weak, near the BCS limit, to strong, as in cuprates, bridging the gap between
these two extremes. Moreover, for Fe- and Cu-based materials, our analysis
reveals a universal correlation between the gap ratio and Tc, which is not
found in conventional superconductors and therefore supports a common
unconventional pairing mechanism in both families. An important consequence of
this result for ferropnictides is that the separation in energy between the
excitonic spin-resonance mode and the particle-hole continuum, which determines
the resonance damping, no longer appears independent of Tc.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, 5 tables with an exhaustive overview of the
published gap and spin-resonance measurements in Fe-based superconductors.
New in V3: updated references. To be published in Phys. Rev.
Eliashberg approach to superconductivity-induced infrared anomalies in Ba0.68K0.32Fe2As2
We report the full complex dielectric function of high-purity
single crystals
with determined by wide-band spectroscopic
ellipsometry at temperatures . We discuss the
microscopic origin of superconductivity-induced infrared optical anomalies in
the framework of a multiband Eliashberg theory with two distinct
superconducting gap energies $2\Delta_{\mathrm{A}}\approx6\
k_{\mathrm{B}}T_{\mathrm{c}}2\Delta_{\mathrm{B}}\approx2.2\
k_{\mathrm{B}}T_{\mathrm{c}}14\
k_{\mathrm{B}}T_{\mathrm{c}}$ can be ascribed to spin-fluctuation--assisted
processes in the clean limit of the strong-coupling regime.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; suppl. material: 3 pages, 2 figures, 1
interactive simulation (Fig. S3
Interaction-induced singular Fermi surface in a high-temperature oxypnictide superconductor
In the family of iron-based superconductors, LaFeAsO-type materials possess
the simplest electronic structure due to their pronounced two-dimensionality.
And yet they host superconductivity with the highest transition temperature
Tc=55K. Early theoretical predictions of their electronic structure revealed
multiple large circular portions of the Fermi surface with a very good
geometrical overlap (nesting), believed to enhance the pairing interaction and
thus superconductivity. The prevalence of such large circular features in the
Fermi surface has since been associated with many other iron-based compounds
and has grown to be generally accepted in the field. In this work we show that
a prototypical compound of the 1111-type, SmFe0.92Co0.08AsO, is at odds with
this description and possesses a distinctly different Fermi surface, which
consists of two singular constructs formed by the edges of several bands,
pulled to the Fermi level from the depths of the theoretically predicted band
structure by strong electronic interactions. Such singularities dramatically
affect the low-energy electronic properties of the material, including
superconductivity. We further argue that occurrence of these singularities
correlates with the maximum superconducting transition temperature attainable
in each material class over the entire family of iron-based superconductors.Comment: Open access article available online at
http://www.nature.com/srep/2015/150521/srep10392/full/srep10392.htm
Nanoscale layering of antiferromagnetic and superconducting phases in Rb2Fe4Se5
We studied phase separation in a single-crystalline antiferromagnetic
superconductor Rb2Fe4Se5 (RFS) using a combination of scattering-type scanning
near-field optical microscopy (s-SNOM) and low-energy muon spin rotation
(LE-\mu SR). We demonstrate that the antiferromagnetic and superconducting
phases segregate into nanometer-thick layers perpendicular to the iron-selenide
planes, while the characteristic in-plane size of the metallic domains reaches
10 \mu m. By means of LE-\mu SR we further show that in a 40-nm thick surface
layer the ordered antiferromagnetic moment is drastically reduced, while the
volume fraction of the paramagnetic phase is significantly enhanced over its
bulk value. Self-organization into a quasiregular heterostructure indicates an
intimate connection between the modulated superconducting and antiferromagnetic
phases.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. Updated version published in Phys. Rev. Lett. on
5 July 201
High-temperature superconductivity from fine-tuning of Fermi-surface singularities in iron oxypnictides
In the family of the iron-based superconductors, the FeAsO-type compounds
(with being a rare-earth metal) exhibit the highest bulk superconducting
transition temperatures () up to and thus hold
the key to the elusive pairing mechanism. Recently, it has been demonstrated
that the intrinsic electronic structure of SmFeCoAsO
() is highly nontrivial and consists of multiple
band-edge singularities in close proximity to the Fermi level. However, it
remains unclear whether these singularities are generic to the FeAsO-type
materials and if so, whether their exact topology is responsible for the
aforementioned record . In this work, we use angle-resolved
photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) to investigate the inherent electronic
structure of the NdFeAsOF compound with a twice higher
. We find a similarly singular Fermi surface and
further demonstrate that the dramatic enhancement of superconductivity in this
compound correlates closely with the fine-tuning of one of the band-edge
singularities to within a fraction of the superconducting energy gap
below the Fermi level. Our results provide compelling evidence that the
band-structure singularities near the Fermi level in the iron-based
superconductors must be explicitly accounted for in any attempt to understand
the mechanism of superconducting pairing in these materials.Comment: Open access article available online at
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep1827
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Ultrafast nonlocal collective dynamics of Kane plasmon-polaritons in a narrow-gap semiconductor
The observation of ultrarelativistic fermions in condensed-matter systems has uncovered a cornucopia of novel phenomenology as well as a potential for effective ultrafast light engineering of new states of matter. While the nonequilibrium properties of two- and three-dimensional (2D and 3D) hexagonal crystals have been studied extensively, our understanding of the photoinduced dynamics in 3D single-valley ultrarelativistic materials is, unexpectedly, lacking. Here, we use ultrafast scanning near-field optical spectroscopy to access and control nonequilibrium large-momentum plasmon-polaritons in thin films of a prototypical narrow-bandgap semiconductor Hg0.81Cd0.19Te. We demonstrate that these collective excitations exhibit distinctly nonclassical scaling with electron density characteristic of the ultrarelativistic Kane regime and experience ultrafast initial relaxation followed by a long-lived highly coherent state. Our observation and ultrafast control of Kane plasmon-polaritons in a semiconducting material using light sources in the standard telecommunications fiber-optics window open a new avenue toward high-bandwidth coherent information processing in next-generation plasmonic circuits
Normal state resistivity of BaKFeAs: evidence for multiband strong-coupling behavior
We present theoretical analysis of the normal state resistivity in multiband
superconductors in the framework of Eliashberg theory. The results are compared
with measurements of the temperature dependence of normal state resistivity of
high-purity BaKFeAs single crystals with the
highest reported transition temperature = 38.5 K. The experimental data
demonstrate strong deviations from the Bloch-Gr\"{u}neisen behavior, namely the
tendency to saturation of the resistivity at high temperatures. The observed
behavior of the resistivity is explained within the two band scenario when the
first band is strongly coupled and relatively clean, while the second band is
weakly coupled and is characterized by much stronger impurity scattering.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to be published in JETP Letters Vol.94, N
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