Orbital-dependent effects of electron correlations in microscopic models for iron-based superconductors

The bad metal behavior in the normal state of the iron-based superconductors suggests an intimate connection between the superconductivity and a proximity to a Mott transition. At the same time, there is strong evidence for the multi-orbital nature of the electronic excitations. It is then important to understand the orbital-dependent effects of electron correlations. In this paper we review the recent theoretical progresses on the metal-to-insulator transition in multiorbital models for the iron-based superconductors. These include studies of models that contain at least the 3d xy and 3d xz/yz models, using a slave-spin technique. For commensurate filling corresponding to that of the parent iron pnictides and chalcogenideds, a Mott transition generally exists in all these models. Near the Mott transition, a strongly correlated metal exhibiting bad metal features and strong orbital selectivity is stabilized due to the interplay of Hund's coupling and orbital-degeneracy breaking. Particularly for the alkaline iron selenides, the ordered vacancies effectively reduce the kinetic energy, thereby pushing the system further into the Mott-insulating regime; in the metallic state, there exists an orbital-selective Mott phase in which the iron 3d xy orbital is Mott localized while the other 3d orbitals are still itinerant. An overall phase diagram for the alkaline iron selenides has been proposed, in which the orbital-selective Mott phase connects between the superconducting phase and the Mott-insulating parent state.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures, to appear in a special issue of Current Opinion in Solid State & Materials Science on "Fe-based superconductors

Orbital-selective superconductivity, gap anisotropy and spin resonance excitations in a multiorbital t-J1-J2 model for iron pnictides

We study the orbital-dependent superconducting pairing in a five-orbital t-J1-J2 model for iron pnictides. Depending on the orbital selectivity of electron correlations and the orbital characters along the Fermi surface, the superconducting gap in an A_{1g} pairing state may exhibit anisotropy. This anisotropy varies with the degree of J1-J2 magnetic frustration. We have also calculated the dynamical spin susceptibility in the superconducting state. The frequency dependence of the susceptibility at the antiferromagnetic wavevector (\pi,0) shows a resonance, whose width is enhanced by the orbital dependence of the superconducting gap; when the latter is sufficiently strong, the resonance peak may be split into two. We discuss the implications of our results on the recent angle-resolved photoemission and neutron-scattering measurements in several superconducting iron pnictides.Comment: 4.5 pages, 3 figures, with supplementary material

Orbital selectivity enhanced by nematic order in FeSe

Motivated by the recent low-tempearture experiments on bulk FeSe, we study the electron correlation effects in a multiorbital model for this compound in the nematic phase using the U(1) slave-spin theory. We find that a finite nematic order helps to stabilize an orbital selective Mott phase. Moreover, we propose that when the d- and s-wave bond nematic orders are combined with the ferro-orbital order, there exists a surprisingly large orbital selectivity between the xz and yz orbitals even though the associated band splitting is relatively small. Our results explain the seemingly unusual observation of strong orbital selectivity in the nematic phase of FeSe, and uncover new clues on the nature of the nematic order, and sets the stage to elucidate the interplay between superconductivity and nematicity in iron-based superconductors.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures with 5 pages, 5 figures in supplementary material, published versio

A hybrid model approach for strange and multi-strange hadrons in 2.76 A TeV Pb+Pb collisions

Using the VISHNU hybrid model, we calculate the multiplicity, spectra, and elliptic flow of $\Lambda$, $\Xi$ and $\Omega$ in 2.76 A TeV Pb+Pb collisions. Comparisons between our calculations and the ALICE measurements show that the model generally describes the soft hadron data of these strange and multi-strange hadrons at several centrality bins. Mass ordering of elliptic flow among $\pi$, K, p, $\Lambda$, $\Xi$ and $\Omega$ has also been studied and discussed. With a nice description of the particle yields, we explore chemical and thermal freeze-out of various hadrons species at the LHC within the framework of the VISHNU hybrid model.Comment: version 2: with several references added, published in PR

Isobaric Reconstruction of the Baryonic Acoustic Oscillation

In this paper, we report a significant recovery of the linear baryonic acoustic oscillation (BAO) signature by applying the isobaric reconstruction algorithm to the non-linear matter density field. Assuming only the longitudinal component of the displacement being cosmologically relevant, this algorithm iteratively solves the coordinate transform between the Lagrangian and Eulerian frames without requiring any specific knowledge of the dynamics. For dark matter field, it produces the non-linear displacement potential with very high fidelity. The reconstruction error at the pixel level is within a few percent, and is caused only by the emergence of the transverse component after the shell-crossing. As it circumvents the strongest non-linearity of the density evolution, the reconstructed field is well-described by linear theory and immune from the bulk-flow smearing of the BAO signature. Therefore this algorithm could significantly improve the measurement accuracy of the sound horizon scale. For a perfect large-scale structure survey at redshift zero without Poisson or instrumental noise, the fractional error is reduced by a factor of 2.7, very close to the ideal limit with linear power spectrum and Gaussian covariance matrix.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted versio

Entanglement R\'enyi α\alpha -entropy

We study the entanglement R\'{e}nyi $\alpha$-entropy (ER$\alpha$E) as the measure of entanglement. Instead of a single quantity in standard entanglement quantification for a quantum state by using the von Neumann entropy for the well-accepted entanglement of formation (EoF), the ER$\alpha$E gives a continuous spectrum parametrized by variable $\alpha$ as the entanglement measure, and it reduces to the standard EoF in the special case $\alpha \rightarrow 1$. The ER$\alpha$E provides more information in entanglement quantification, and can be used such as in determining the convertibility of entangled states by local operations and classical communication. A series of new results are obtained: (i) we can show that ER$\alpha$E of two states, which can be mixed or pure, may be incomparable, in contrast to the fact that there always exists an order for EoF of two states; (ii) similar as the case of EoF, we study in a fully analytical way the ER$\alpha$E for arbitrary two-qubit states, the Werner states and isotropic states in general d-dimension; (iii) we provide a proof of the previous conjecture for the analytical functional form of EoF of isotropic states in arbitrary d-dimension.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure