TY - JOUR
T1 - Novel electronic nematicity in heavily hole-doped iron pnictide superconductors
AU - Ishida, Kousuke
AU - Tsujii, Masaya
AU - Hosoi, Suguru
AU - Mizukami, Yuta
AU - Ishida, Shigeyuki
AU - Iyo, Akira
AU - Eisaki, Hiroshi
AU - Wolf, Thomas
AU - Grube, Kai
AU - Löhneysen, Hilbert V.
AU - Fernandes, Rafael M.
AU - Shibauchi, Takasada
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/3/24
Y1 - 2020/3/24
N2 - Electronic nematicity, a correlated state that spontaneously breaks rotational symmetry, is observed in several layered quantum materials. In contrast to their liquid-crystal counterparts, the nematic director cannot usually point in an arbitrary direction (XY nematics), but is locked by the crystal to discrete directions (Ising nematics), resulting in strongly anisotropic fluctuations above the transition. Here, we report on the observation of nearly isotropic XY-nematic fluctuations, via elastoresistance measurements, in hole-doped Ba1−xRbxFe2As2 iron-based superconductors. While for x = 0, the nematic director points along the in-plane diagonals of the tetragonal lattice, for x = 1, it points along the horizontal and vertical axes. Remarkably, for intermediate doping, the susceptibilities of these two symmetry-irreducible nematic channels display comparable Curie-Weiss behavior, thus revealing a nearly XY-nematic state. This opens a route to assess this elusive electronic quantum liquid-crystalline state.
AB - Electronic nematicity, a correlated state that spontaneously breaks rotational symmetry, is observed in several layered quantum materials. In contrast to their liquid-crystal counterparts, the nematic director cannot usually point in an arbitrary direction (XY nematics), but is locked by the crystal to discrete directions (Ising nematics), resulting in strongly anisotropic fluctuations above the transition. Here, we report on the observation of nearly isotropic XY-nematic fluctuations, via elastoresistance measurements, in hole-doped Ba1−xRbxFe2As2 iron-based superconductors. While for x = 0, the nematic director points along the in-plane diagonals of the tetragonal lattice, for x = 1, it points along the horizontal and vertical axes. Remarkably, for intermediate doping, the susceptibilities of these two symmetry-irreducible nematic channels display comparable Curie-Weiss behavior, thus revealing a nearly XY-nematic state. This opens a route to assess this elusive electronic quantum liquid-crystalline state.
KW - Electronic nematicity
KW - Iron-based superconductors
KW - Nematic susceptibility
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U2 - 10.1073/pnas.1909172117
DO - 10.1073/pnas.1909172117
M3 - Article
C2 - 32165540
AN - SCOPUS:85082321717
SN - 0027-8424
VL - 117
SP - 6424
EP - 6429
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
IS - 12
ER -