Stripes developed at the strong limit of nematicity in FeSe film
- Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China). State Key Lab. of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics. Dept. of Physics; Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing (China); SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Stanford Univ., CA (United States). Stanford Inst. for Materials and Energy Sciences
- Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing (China); SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Stanford Univ., CA (United States). Stanford Inst. for Materials and Energy Sciences; Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Advanced Light Source; Peking Univ., Beijing (China). International Center for Quantum Materials. School of Physics
- Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China). State Key Lab. of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics. Dept. of Physics
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Advanced Light Source
- SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Stanford Univ., CA (United States). Stanford Inst. for Materials and Energy Sciences
- SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States). Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource
- Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China). State Key Lab. of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics. Dept. of Physics; Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing (China)
- SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Stanford Univ., CA (United States). Stanford Inst. for Materials and Energy Sciences. Dept. of Physics and Applied Physics. Geballe Lab. for Advanced Materials
A single monolayer of iron selenide grown on strontium titanate shows an impressive enhancement of superconductivity compared with the bulk, as well as a novel Fermi surface topology 2-5, extreme two-dimensionality, and the possibility of phonon-enhanced electron pairing. For films thicker than one unit cell, however, the electronic structure is markedly different, with a drastically suppressed superconductivity and strong nematicity appearing 1,5. The physics driving this extraordinary dichotomy of superconducting behaviour is far from clear. Here, we use low-temperature scanning tunnelling microscopy to study multilayers of iron selenide grown by molecular beam epitaxy, and find a stripe-type charge ordering instability that develops beneath the nematic state. The charge ordering is visible and pinned in the vicinity of impurities. And as it emerges in the strong limit of nematicity, it suggests that a magnetic fluctuation with a rather small wavevector may be competing with the ordinary collinear antiferromagnetic ordering in multilayer films. The existence of stripes in iron-based superconductors, which resemble the stripe order in cuprates, not only suggests that electronic anisotropy and correlation are playing an important role, but also provides a platform for probing the complex interactions between nematicity, charge ordering, magnetism and superconductivity in high-temperature superconductors.
- Research Organization:
- SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); National Science Foundation (NSF); Ministry of Science and Technology of China
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-76SF00515; AC02-05CH11231; 11674191; 2016YFA0301002
- OSTI ID:
- 1425888
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1437971
- Journal Information:
- Nature Physics, Vol. 13, Issue 10; ISSN 1745-2473
- Publisher:
- Nature Publishing Group (NPG)Copyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Web of Science
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