1. Eliminating Stress leads to New Clues about Superconductivity
Scientific Achievement
The resistivity anisotropy in FeSe has been extrapolated to the zero-stress limit, and studied over a broad range of temperatures without interference from long-range magnetic order.
Significance and Impact
The findings demonstrate that electronic nematicity is dominated by inelastic scattering of electrons by magnetic spin fluctuations.
Research Details
The in-plane anisotropy as function of the applied tensile stress and temperature was measured on mechanically de-twinned FeSe formed by stretching the sample along its orthorhombic axis.
The zero-stress limit was determined by extrapolating incremental stress and by elastoresistive response to infinitesimal deformations.
The nematic order parameter was extracted from the difference in bireflectance of various structural domains.
1 mm
7 K
10 K
80 K
92 K
Polarized-light image of an FeSe single crystal at 7 K, reveals orthorhombic domains oriented along the tetragonal [100] direction (parallel to the sample sides). For detwinning, the sample is cut along the [110] tetragonal direction. Lower frames show the selected region at different temperatures across the nematic/structural transition at 90 K.
M. A. Tanatar, A. E. Böhmer, E. I. Timmons, M. Schütt, G. Drachuck, V. Taufour, K. Kothapalli, A. Kreyssig, S. L. Bud’ko, P. C. Canfield, R. M. Fernandes, and R. Prozorov, Physical Review Letters, 117, (2016). DOI: /PhysRevLett