Due to the intertwining between electronic nematic and elastic degrees of freedom, lattice defects and structural inhomogeneities commonly found in crystals can have a significant impact on the electronic properties of nematic materials. Here, we show that defects commonly present at the surface of crystals generally shift the wave-vector of the nematic instability to a non-zero value, resulting in an incommensurate electronic smectic phase. Such a smectic state onsets above the bulk nematic transition temperature and is localized near the surface of the sample. We argue that this effect may explain not only recent observations of a modulated nematic phase in iron-based superconductors, but also several previous puzzling experiments that reported signatures consistent with nematic order before the onset of a bulk structural distortion.
@article{arxiv.2111.00541,
title = {Defect-induced electronic smectic state at the surface of nematic materials},
author = {Aritra Lahiri and Avraham Klein and Rafael M. Fernandes},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2111.00541},
year = {2022}
}