English

Phase transition beneath the superconducting dome in BaFe$_2$(As$_{1-x}$P$_x$)$_2$

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2015-08-25 v2 Superconductivity

Abstract

We present a theory for the large suppression of the superfluid-density, ρs\rho_s, in BaFe2_2(As1x_{1-x}Px_x)2_2 in the vicinity of a putative spin-density wave quantum critical point at a P-doping, x=xcx=x_{c}. We argue that the transition becomes weakly first-order in the vicinity of xcx_{c}, and disorder induces puddles of superconducting and antiferromagnetic regions at short length-scales; thus the system becomes an electronic micro-emulsion. We propose that frustrated Josephson couplings between the superconducting grains suppress ρs\rho_s. In addition, the presence of `normal' quasiparticles at the interface of the frustrated Josephson junctions will give rise to a highly non-trivial feature in the low frequency response in a narrow vicinity around xcx_c. We propose a number of experiments to test our theory.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1502.04122,
  title  = {Phase transition beneath the superconducting dome in BaFe$_2$(As$_{1-x}$P$_x$)$_2$},
  author = {Debanjan Chowdhury and J. Orenstein and Subir Sachdev and T. Senthil},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.04122},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

4.5 pages, 4 figures; (v2) made some textual changes for increased clarity. This version also includes a new figure, supplementary material and updated references