• Open Access

Nematic state of the FeSe superconductor

Sahana Rößler, Mauro Coduri, Alexander A. Tsirlin, Clemens Ritter, Gabriel Cuello, Cevriye Koz, Liudmila Muzica, Ulrich Schwarz, Ulrich K. Rößler, Steffen Wirth, and Marco Scavini
Phys. Rev. B 105, 064505 – Published 9 February 2022

Abstract

We study the crystal structure of the tetragonal iron selenide FeSe and its nematic phase transition to the low-temperature orthorhombic structure using synchrotron x-ray and neutron scattering analyzed in both real space and reciprocal space. We show that in the local structure the orthorhombic distortion associated with the electronically driven nematic order is more pronounced at short length scales. It also survives to temperatures above 90 K, where reciprocal-space analysis suggests tetragonal symmetry. Additionally, the real-space pair distribution function analysis of the synchrotron x-ray diffraction data reveals a tiny broadening of the peaks corresponding to the nearest Fe-Fe, nearest Fe-Se, and next-nearest Fe-Se bond distances as well as the tetrahedral torsion angles at a short length scale of 20 Å. This broadening appears below 20 K and is attributed to a pseudogap. However, we did not observe any further reduction in local symmetry below orthorhombic down to 3 K. Our results suggest that the superconducting gap anisotropy in FeSe is not associated with any symmetry-lowering short-range structural correlations.

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  • Received 10 November 2021
  • Revised 17 January 2022
  • Accepted 24 January 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.105.064505

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by the Max Planck Society.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Sahana Rößler1,*, Mauro Coduri2, Alexander A. Tsirlin3, Clemens Ritter4, Gabriel Cuello4, Cevriye Koz1, Liudmila Muzica1, Ulrich Schwarz1, Ulrich K. Rößler5, Steffen Wirth1, and Marco Scavini6,†

  • 1Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Nöthnitzer Straße 40, 01187 Dresden, Germany
  • 2Chemistry Department, University of Pavia, via Taramelli 16, 27100, Pavia, Italy
  • 3Experimental Physics VI, Center for Electronic Correlations and Magnetism, University of Augsburg, 86159 Augsburg, Germany
  • 4Institut Laue-Langevin, 71 Avenue des Martyrs, CS20156, 38042 Grenoble Cédex 9, France
  • 5IFW Dresden, Helmholtzstraße 20, 01069 Dresden, Germany
  • 6Dipartimento di Chimica, Universita degli Studi di Milano, Via Golgi 19, 20133 Milano, Italy

  • *roessler@cpfs.mpg.de
  • marco.scavini@unimi.it

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Issue

Vol. 105, Iss. 6 — 1 February 2022

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