Microscopic Description of Unconventional Nodal Superconductivity in FeSe

Abstract

Finding of unconventional superconductivity (USC) in FeSe in an electronic "normal" state with broken $C_{4v}$ rotational symmetry testifies to the diversity of pairing states in Fe-based superconductors. Moreover, such USC emerges as a direct instability of a normal state without Landau Fermi liquid quasiparticles, increasingly dubbed a `strange' metal. Here, we combine inputs from a first-principles correlated electronic structure method (LDA+DMFT) and symmetry analyses to propose a novel mechanism for unconventional nodal superconductivity as a direct instability of an incoherent bad-metal without Landau Fermi-liquid quasiparticles. We find that a ferro-quadrupolar order, with novel spin quadrupoar correlations enhances orbital-selective Mottness in FeSe, and competes with unconventional nodal superconductivity with $s_{\pm}$-pair symmetry. We support our proposal by demonstrating good accord with spectral and magnetic fluctuation data, and rationalize the strain and pressure dependence of $T_{c}$ by appealing to competition between superconductivity and electronic ferro-quadrupolar order.