Magnetism, superconductivity, and spontaneous orbital order in iron-based superconductors: who comes first and why?

Magnetism and nematic order are the two non-superconducting orders observed in iron-based superconductors. To elucidate the interplay between them and ultimately unveil the pairing mechanism, several models have been investigated. In models with quenched orbital degrees of freedom, magnetic fluctuations promote stripe magnetism which induces orbital order. In models with quenched spin degrees of freedom, charge fluctuations promote spontaneous orbital order which induces stripe magnetism. Here we develop an unbiased approach, in which we treat magnetic and orbital fluctuations on equal footing. Key to our approach is the inclusion of the orbital character of the low-energy electronic states into renormalization group analysis. Our results show that in systems with large Fermi energies, such as BaFe2As2, LaFeAsO, and NaFeAs, orbital order is induced by stripe magnetism. However, in systems with small Fermi energies, such as FeSe, the system develops a spontaneous orbital order, while magnetic order does not develop. Our results provide a unifying description of different iron-based materials.Comment: 61 pages, 19 figure

Very Singular Similarity Solutions and Hermitian Spectral Theory for Semilinear Odd-Order PDEs

Very singular self-similar solutions of semilinear odd-order PDEs are studied on the basis of a Hermitian-type spectral theory for linear rescaled odd-order operators.Comment: 49 pages, 12 Figure

Gap nodes induced by coexistence with antiferromagnetism in iron-based superconductors

We investigate the pairing in iron pnictides in the coexistence phase, which displays both superconducting and antiferromagnetic orders. By solving the pairing problem on the Fermi surface reconstructed by long-range magnetic order, we find that the pairing interaction necessarily becomes angle-dependent, even if it was isotropic in the paramagnetic phase, which results in an angular variation of the superconducting gap along the Fermi surfaces. We find that the gap has no nodes for a small antiferromagnetic order parameter M, but may develop accidental nodes for intermediate values of M, when one pair of the reconstructed Fermi surface pockets disappear. For even larger M, when the other pair of reconstructed Fermi pockets is gapped by long-range magnetic order, superconductivity still exists, but the quasiparticle spectrum becomes nodeless again. We also show that the application of an external magnetic field facilitates the formation of nodes. We argue that this mechanism for a nodeless-nodal-nodeless transition explains recent thermal conductivity measurements of hole-doped Ba_{1-x}K_xFe_2As_2. [J-Ph. Read et.al. arXiv:1105.2232].Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, submitted to PR

Enhancement of TcT_{c} by disorder in underdoped iron pnictides

We analyze how disorder affects the transition temperature $T_{c}$ of the $s^{+-}$superconducting state in the iron pnictides. The conventional wisdom is that $T_{c}$ should rapidly decrease with increasing inter-band non-magnetic impurity scattering, but we show that this behavior holds only in the overdoped region of the phase diagram. In the underdoped regime, where superconductivity emerges from a pre-existing magnetic state, disorder gives rise to two competing effects: breaking of the Cooper pairs, which tends to reduce $T_{c}$, and suppression of the itinerant magnetic order, which tends to bring $T_{c}$ up. We show that for a wide range of parameters the second effect wins, leading to an increase of $T_{c}$ with disorder in the coexistence state. Our results explain several recent experimental findings and provide another evidence for $s^{+-}$-pairing in the iron pnictides.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; revised version accepted in PRB-R