Andreas Kreisel

Discovery of orbital-selective Cooper pairing in FeSe

A deeper look into iron selenide In the past 10 years, iron-based superconductors have created more puzzles than they have helped resolve. Some of the most fundamental outstanding questions are how strong the interactions are and what the electron pairing mechanism is. Now two groups have made contributions toward resolving these questions in the intriguing compound iron selenide (FeSe) (see the Perspective by Lee). Gerber et al. used photoemission spectroscopy coupled with x-ray diffraction to find that FeSe has a very sizable electron-phonon interaction. Quasiparticle interference imaging helped Sprau et al. determine the shape of the superconducting gap and find that the electron pairing in FeSe is orbital-selective. Science, this issue p. 71, p. 75; see also p. 32 Cooper pairing in iron selenide predominantly occurs between electrons from dyz orbitals of iron atoms. The superconductor iron selenide (FeSe) is of intense interest owing to its unusual nonmagnetic nematic state and potential for high-temperature superconductivity. But its Cooper pairing mechanism has not been determined. We used Bogoliubov quasiparticle interference imaging to determine the Fermi surface geometry of the electronic bands surrounding the Γ = (0, 0) and X = (π/aFe, 0) points of FeSe and to measure the corresponding superconducting energy gaps. We show that both gaps are extremely anisotropic but nodeless and that they exhibit gap maxima oriented orthogonally in momentum space. Moreover, by implementing a novel technique, we demonstrate that these gaps have opposite sign with respect to each other. This complex gap configuration reveals the existence of orbital-selective Cooper pairing that, in FeSe, is based preferentially on electrons from the dyz orbitals of the iron atoms.

Disorder-induced topological change of the superconducting gap structure in iron pnictides

In superconductors with unconventional pairing mechanisms, the energy gap in the excitation spectrum often has nodes, which allow quasiparticle excitations at low energies. In many cases, such as in d-wave cuprate superconductors, the position and topology of nodes are imposed by the symmetry, and thus the presence of gapless excitations is protected against disorder. Here we report on the observation of distinct changes in the gap structure of iron-pnictide superconductors with increasing impurity scattering. By the successive introduction of nonmagnetic point defects into BaFe2(As(1-x)P(x))(2) crystals via electron irradiation, we find from the low-temperature penetration depth measurements that the nodal state changes to a nodeless state with fully gapped excitations. Moreover, under further irradiation the gapped state evolves into another gapless state, providing bulk evidence of unconventional sign-changing s-wave superconductivity. This demonstrates that the topology of the superconducting gap can be controlled by disorder, which is a strikingly unique feature of iron pnictides.

Using controlled disorder to distinguish s ± and s + + gap structure in Fe-based superconductors

We reconsider the effect of disorder on the properties of a superconductor characterized by a sign-changing order parameter appropriate for Fe-based materials. Within a simple two band model, we calculate simultaneously

Brillouin light scattering spectroscopy of parametrically excited dipole-exchange magnons

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Wide-range wavevector selectivity of magnon gases in Brillouin light scattering spectroscopy.

, the change in residual resistivity

Nematicity, magnetism and superconductivity in FeSe

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Superconducting gap in LiFeAs from three-dimensional spin-fluctuation pairing calculations

, and the zero-energy density of states, and show how these results change for various types of gap structures and assumptions regarding the impurity scattering. The rate of

Spin fluctuations and superconductivity in KxFe2−ySe2

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Pairing symmetry of the one-band Hubbard model in the paramagnetic weak-coupling limit: A numerical RPA study

suppression is shown to vary dramatically according to details of the impurity model considered. We search therefore for a practical, experimentally oriented signature of a gap of the

Time-dependent spin-wave theory

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