arXiv subjects

Pengcheng Dai

Publications and source records attributed to Pengcheng Dai.

At least 235 records · Page 13Linked to original sources

arXiv2011

Evolution of normal and superconducting properties of single crystals of Na$_{1-δ}$FeAs upon interaction with environment

Iron-arsenide superconductor Na$_{1-δ}$FeAs is highly reactive with the environment. Due to the high mobility of Na ions, this reaction affects the entire bulk of the crystals and leads an to effective stoichiometry change. Here we use this effect to study the doping evolution of normal and superconducting properties of \emph{the same} single crystals. Controlled reaction with air increases the superconducting transition temperature, $T_c$, from the initial value of 12 K to 27 K as probed by transport and magnetic measurements. Similar effects are observed in samples reacted with Apiezon N-grease, which slows down the reaction rate and results in more homogeneous samples. In both cases the temperature dependent resistivity, $ρ_a(T)$, shows a dramatic change with exposure time. In freshly prepared samples, $ρ_a(T)$ reveals clear features at the tetragonal-to-orthorhombic ($T_s$ $\approx$ 60 K) and antiferromagnetic ($T_m$=45 K) transitions and superconductivity with onset $T_{c,ons}$=16 K and offset $T_{c,off}$=12 K. The exposed samples show $T-$linear variation of $ρ_a(T)$ above $T_c,ons$=30 K ($T_{c,off}$=26 K), suggesting bulk character of the observed doping evolution and implying the existence of a quantum critical point at the optimal doping. The resistivity for different doping levels is affected below $\sim$200 K suggesting the existence of a characteristic energy scale that terminates the $T-$linear regime, which could be identified with a pseudogap.

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arXiv2011

Common origin of the two types of magnetic fluctuations in iron chalcogenides

We use inelastic neutron scattering to study the low energy spin excitations in moderately doped non-superconducting Fe$_{1.01}$Te$_{0.72}$Se$_{0.28}$. The spin excitations in this system contain components near (0.5,0,0) and (0.5,0.5,0) in a-b plane reciprocal lattice units using tetragonal unit cell notation (a=b=3.772 Åand c=6.061 Å). At low energies the scattering is centered around (0.5,0,0). With increasing energy, the spectral weight of low energy spin excitations centered around (0.5,0,0) abruptly shifts around 3 meV to the incommensurate spin excitations centered around (0.5,0.5,0). However both types of spin fluctuations exhibit the identical temperature dependence. These results indicate that the (0.5,0,0) type spin excitations and the incommensurate excitations around the (0.5,0.5,0) position have a common origin and both must be taken into account to understand the nature of magnetism and superconducting pairing in the iron chalcogenides.

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arXiv2011

Antiferromagnetic order and superlattice structure in nonsuperconducting and superconducting RbyFe(1.6+x)Se2

Neutron diffraction has been used to study the lattice and magnetic structures of the insulating and superconducting Rb$_y$Fe$_{1.6+x}$Se$_2$. For the insulating Rb$_{y}$Fe$_{1.6+x}$Se$_2$, neutron polarization analysis and single crystal neutron diffraction unambiguously confirm the earlier proposed $\sqrt{5}\times\sqrt{5}$ block antiferromagnetic structure. For superconducting samples ($T_c=30$ K), we find that in addition to the tetragonal $\sqrt{5}\times\sqrt{5}$ superlattice structure transition at 513 K, the material develops a separate $\sqrt{2}\times \sqrt{2}$ superlattice structure at a lower temperature of 480 K. These results suggest that superconducting Rb$_{y}$Fe$_{1.6+x}$Se$_2$ is phase separated with coexisting $\sqrt{2}\times \sqrt{2}$ and $\sqrt{5}\times\sqrt{5}$ superlattice structures.

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arXiv2011

In-plane magnetic field effect on the neutron spin resonance in optimally doped FeSe$_{0.4}$Te$_{0.6}$ and BaFe$_{1.9}$Ni$_{0.1}$As$_{2}$ superconductors

We use inelastic neutron scattering to study the effect of an in-plane magnetic field on the magnetic resonance in optimally doped superconductors FeSe$_{0.4}$Te$_{0.6}$ ($T_c=14$ K) and BaFe$_{1.9}$Ni$_{0.1}$As$_{2}$ ($T_c=20$ K). While the magnetic field up to 14.5 Tesla does not change the energy of the resonance, it particially suppresses $T_c$ and the corresponding superconductivity-induced intensity gain of the mode. However, we find no direct evidence for the field-induced spin-1 Zeeman splitting of the resonance. Therefore, it is still unclear if the resonance is the long-sought singlet-triplet excitation directly coupled to the superconducting electron Cooper pairs.

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arXiv2011

Spin Waves and magnetic exchange interactions in insulating Rb$_{0.89}$Fe$_{1.58}$Se$_2$

The discovery of alkaline iron selenide $A$Fe$_{1.6+x}$Se$_2$ ($A=$ K, Rb, Cs) superconductors has generated considerable excitement in the condensed matter physics community because superconductivity in these materials may have a different origin from the sign reversed s-wave electron pairing mechanism, a leading candidate proposed for all other Fe-based superconductors. Although $A$Fe$_{1.6+x}$Se$_2$ are isostructural with the metallic antiferromagnetic (AF) iron pnictides such as (Ba,Ca,Sr)Fe$_2$As$_2$, they are insulators near $x=0$ and form a $\sqrt{5}\times\sqrt{5}$ blocked AF structure (Fig. 1a) completely different from the iron pnictides. If magnetism is responsible for superconductivity of all iron-based materials, it is important to determine their common magnetic features. Here we use neutron scattering to map out spin waves in the AF insulating Rb$_{0.89}$Fe$_{1.58}$Se$_2$. We find that although Rb$_{0.89}$Fe$_{1.58}$Se$_2$ has a N$\rm \acute{e}$el temperature ($T_N=475$ K) much higher than that of the iron pnictides ($T_N\leq 220$ K), spin waves for both classes of materials have similar zone boundary energies. A comparison of the fitted effective exchange couplings using a local moment Heisenberg Hamiltonian in Rb$_{0.89}$Fe$_{1.58}$Se$_2$, (Ba,Ca,Sr)Fe$_2$As$_2$, and iron chalcogenide Fe$_{1.05}$Te reveals that their next nearest neighbor (NNN) exchange couplings are similar. Therefore, superconductivity in all Fe-based materials may have a common magnetic origin that is intimately associated with the NNN magnetic exchange interactions, even though they have metallic or insulating ground states, different AF orders and electronic band structures.

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arXiv2011

Electron-Spin Excitation Coupling in an Electron Doped Copper Oxide Superconductor

High-temperature (high-Tc) superconductivity in the copper oxides arises from electron or hole doping of their antiferromagnetic (AF) insulating parent compounds. The evolution of the AF phase with doping and its spatial coexistence with superconductivity are governed by the nature of charge and spin correlations and provide clues to the mechanism of high-Tc superconductivity. Here we use a combined neutron scattering and scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) to study the Tc evolution of electron-doped superconducting Pr0.88LaCe0.12CuO4-delta obtained through the oxygen annealing process. We find that spin excitations detected by neutron scattering have two distinct modes that evolve with Tc in a remarkably similar fashion to the electron tunneling modes in STS. These results demonstrate that antiferromagnetism and superconductivity compete locally and coexist spatially on nanometer length scales, and the dominant electron-boson coupling at low energies originates from the electron-spin excitations.

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arXiv2011

Antiferromagnetic spin excitations in single crystals of nonsuperconducting Li1-xFeAs

We use neutron scattering to determine spin excitations in single crystals of nonsuperconducting Li1-xFeAs throughout the Brillouin zone. Although angle resolved photoemission experiments and local density approximation calculations suggest poor Fermi surface nesting conditions for antiferromagnetic(AF) order, spin excitations in Li1-xFeAs occur at the AF wave vectors Q = (1, 0) at low energies, but move to wave vectors Q = (\pm 0.5, \pm0.5) near the zone boundary with a total magnetic bandwidth comparable to that of BaFe2As2. These results reveal that AF spin excitations still dominate the low-energy physics of these materials and suggest both itinerancy and strong electron-electron correlations are essential to understand the measured magnetic excitations.

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arXiv2011

Magnetic Frustration and Iron-Vacancy Ordering in Iron-Chalcogenide

We show that the magnetic and vacancy orders in the 122 $(A_{1-y}Fe_{2-x}Se_2)$ iron-chalcogenides can be naturally derived from the $J_1-J_2-J_3$ model with $J_1$ being the ferromagnetic (FM) nearest neighbor exchange coupling and $J_{2}, J_3$ being the antiferromagnetic (AFM) next and third nearest neighbor ones respectively, previously proposed to describe the magnetism in the 11(FeTe/Se) systems. In the 11 systems, the magnetic exchange couplings are extremely frustrated in the ordered bi-collinear antiferromagnetic state so that the magnetic transition temperature is low. In the 122 systems, the formation of iron vacancy order reduces the magnetic frustration and significantly increases the magnetic transition temperature and the ordered magnetic moment. The pattern of the 245 iron-vacancy order ($\sqrt{5}\times \sqrt{5}$) observed in experiments is correlated to the maximum reduction of magnetic frustration. The nature of the iron-vacancy ordering may hence be electronically driven. We explore other possible vacancy patterns and magnetic orders associated with them. We also calculate the spin wave excitations and their novel features to test our model.

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arXiv2011

Spin waves in the $(π,0)$ magnetically ordered iron chalcogenide Fe$_{1.05}$Te

We use inelastic neutron scattering to show that the spin waves in the iron chalcogenide Fe$_{1.05}$Te display novel dispersion clearly different from those in the related iron pnictide systems. By fitting the spin waves to a Heisenberg Hamiltonian, we extract magnetic exchange couplings that are dramatically different from both predictions by density functional calculations and measurements on the iron pnictide CaFe$_2$As$_2$. While the nearest-neighbor exchange couplings in CaFe$_2$As$_2$ and Fe$_{1.05}$Te are quite different, their next-nearest-neighbor exchange couplings are similar. These results suggest that superconductivity in the pnictides and chalcogenides share a common magnetic origin that is intimately associated with the next-nearest-neighbor magnetic coupling between the irons.

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arXiv2010

Nematic spin fluid in the tetragonal phase of BaFe2As2

Magnetic interactions are generally believed to play a key role in mediating electron pairing for superconductivity in iron arsenides; yet their character is only partially understood. Experimentally, the antiferromagnetic (AF) transition is always preceded by or coincident with a tetragonal to orthorhombic structural distortion. Although it has been suggested that this lattice distortion is driven by an electronic nematic phase, where a spontaneously generated electronic liquid crystal state breaks the C4 rotational symmetry of the paramagnetic state, experimental evidence for electronic anisotropy has been either in the low-temperature orthorhombic phase or the tetragonal phase under uniaxial pressure that breaks this symmetry. Here we use inelastic neutron scattering to demonstrate the presence of a large in-plane spin anisotropy above TN in the unstressed tetragonal phase of BaFe2As2. In the low-temperature orthorhombic phase, we find highly anisotropic spin waves with a large damping along the AF a-axis direction. On warming the system to the paramagnetic tetragonal phase, the low-energy spin waves evolve into quasi-elastic excitations, while the anisotropic spin excitations near the zone boundary persist. These results strongly suggest that the spin nematicity we find in the tetragonal phase of BaFe2As2 is the source of the electronic and orbital anisotropy observed above TN by other probes, and has profound consequences for the physics of these materials.

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arXiv2010

Normal-State Hourglass Dispersion of the Spin Excitations in FeSe$_{x}$Te$_{1-x}$

We use cold neutron spectroscopy to study the low-energy spin excitations of superconducting (SC) FeSe$_{0.4}$Te$_{0.6}$ and essentially non-superconducting (NSC) FeSe$_{0.45}$Te$_{0.55}$. In contrast to BaFe$_{2-x}$(Co,Ni)$_{x}$As$_2$, where the low-energy spin excitations are commensurate both in the SC and normal state, the normal-state spin excitations in SC FeSe$_{0.4}$Te$_{0.6}$ are incommensurate and show an hourglass dispersion near the resonance energy. Since similar hourglass dispersion is also found in the NSC FeSe$_{0.45}$Te$_{0.55}$, we argue that the observed incommensurate spin excitations in FeSe$_{1-x}$Te$_{x}$ are not directly associated with superconductivity. Instead, the results can be understood within a picture of Fermi surface nesting assuming extremely low Fermi velocities and spin-orbital coupling.

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arXiv2010

Three dimensionality of band structure and a large residual quasiparticle population in Ba$_{0.67}$K$_{0.33}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ as revealed by the c-axis polarized optical measurement

We report on a c-axis polarized optical measurement on a Ba$_{0.67}$K$_{0.33}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ single crystal. We find that the c-axis optical response is significantly different from that of high-T$_c$ cuprates. The experiments reveal an anisotropic three-dimensional optical response with the absence of the Josephson plasma edge in R($ω$) in the superconducting state. Furthermore, different from the ab-plane optical response, a large residual quasiparticle population down to $T\sim\frac{1}{5}T_c$ was observed in the c-axis polarized reflectance measurement. We elaborate that there exist nodes for the superconducting gap in regions of the 3D Fermi surface that contribute dominantly to the c-axis optical conductivity.

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arXiv2010

Anisotropic Neutron Spin Resonance in Superconducting BaFe$_{1.9}$Ni$_{0.1}$As$_2$

We use polarized inelastic neutron scattering to show that the neutron spin resonance below $T_c$ in superconducting BaFe$_{1.9}$Ni$_{0.1}$As$_2$ ($T_c=20$ K) is purely magnetic in origin. Our analysis further reveals that the resonance peak near 7~meV only occurs for the planar response. This challenges the common perception that the spin resonance in the pnictides is an isotropic triplet excited state of the singlet Cooper pairs, as our results imply that only the $S_{001}=\pm1$ components of the triplet are involved.

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arXiv2010

Direct observation of paramagnons in palladium

We report an inelastic neutron scattering study of the spin fluctuations in the nearly-ferromagnetic element palladium. Dispersive over-damped collective magnetic excitations or ``paramagnons'' are observed up to 128 meV. We analyze our results in terms of a Moriya-Lonzarich-type spin fluctuation model and estimate the contribution of the spin fluctuations to the low temperature heat capacity. In spite of the paramagnon excitations being relatively strong, their relaxation rates are large. This leads to a small contribution to the low-temperature electronic specific heat.

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arXiv2010

Electron-doping evolution of the low-energy spin excitations in the iron arsenide BaFe$_{2-x}$Ni$_{x}$As$_{2}$ superconductors

We use elastic and inelastic neutron scattering to systematically investigate the evolution of the low-energy spin excitations of the iron arsenide superconductor BaFe2-xNixAs2 as a function of nickel doping x. In the undoped state, BaFe2As2 exhibits a tetragonal-to-orthorhombic structural phase transition and simultaneously develops a collinear antiferromagnetic (AF) order below TN = 143 K. Upon electron-doping of x = 0.075 to induce bulk superconductivity with Tc = 12.3 K, the AF ordering temperature reduces to TN = 58 K.We show that the appearance of bulk superconductivity in BaFe1.925Ni0.075As2 coincides with a dispersive neutron spin resonance in the spin excitation spectra, and a reduction in the static ordered moment. For optimally doped BaFe1.9Ni0.1As2 (Tc = 20 K) and overdoped BaFe1.85Ni0.15As2 (Tc = 15 K) superconductors, the static AF long-range order is completely suppressed and the spin excitation spectra are dominated by a resonance and spin-gap at lower energies. We determine the electron-doping dependence of the neutron spin resonance and spin gap energies, and demonstrate that the three-dimensional nature of the resonance survives into the overdoped regime. If spin excitations are important for superconductivity, these results would suggest that the three-dimensional character of the electronic superconducting gaps are prevalent throughout the phase diagram, and may be critical for superconductivity in these materials.

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arXiv2010

Magnetic form factor of SrFe$_2$As$_2$

Neutron diffraction measurements have been carried out to investigate the magnetic form factor of the parent SrFe2As2 system of the iron-based superconductors. The general feature is that the form factor is approximately isotropic in wave vector, indicating that multiple d-orbitals of the iron atoms are occupied as expected based on band theory. Inversion of the diffraction data suggests that there is some elongation of the spin density toward the As atoms. We have also extended the diffraction measurements to investigate a possible jump in the c-axis lattice parameter at the structural phase transition, but find no detectable change within the experimental uncertainties.

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arXiv2009

Magnetic quantum oscillations in YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{6.61}$ and YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{6.69}$ in fields of up to 85 T; patching the hole in the roof of the superconducting dome

We measure magnetic quantum oscillations in the underdoped cuprates YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{6+x}$ with $x=0.61$, 0.69, using fields of up to 85 T. The quantum-oscillation frequencies and effective masses obtained suggest that the Fermi energy in the cuprates has a maximum at $p\approx 0.11-0.12$. On either side, the effective mass may diverge, possibly due to phase transitions associated with the T=0 limit of the metal-insulator crossover (low-$p$ side), and the postulated topological transition from small to large Fermi surface close to optimal doping (high $p$ side).

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arXiv2009

Electronic self-organization in the single-layer manganite $\rm Pr_{\it 1-x}Ca_{\it 1+x}MnO_4$

We use neutron scattering to investigate the doping evolution of the magnetic correlations in the single-layer manganite $\rm Pr_{\it 1-x}Ca_{\it 1+x}MnO_4$, away from the $x=0.5$ composition where the CE-type commensurate antiferromagnetic (AF) structure is stable. We find that short-range incommensurate spin correlations develop as the system is electron doped ($x<0.5$), which coexist with the CE-type AF order. This suggests that electron doping in this system induces an inhomogeneous electronic self-organization, where commensurate AF patches with $x=0.5$ are separated by electron-rich domain walls with short range magnetic correlations. This behavior is strikingly different than for the perovksite $\rm Pr_{\it 1-x}Ca_{\it x}MnO_3$, where the long-range CE-type commensurate AF structure is stable over a wide range of electron or hole doping around $x=0.5$.

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