Orbital fluctuation mechanism for superconductivity in iron-based compounds

Abstract

We propose orbital fluctuations in a multi-band ground state as the superconducting pairing mechanism in the new iron-based materials. We develop a general SU(4) theoretical framework for studying a two-orbital model and discuss a number of scenarios that may be operational within this orbital fluctuation paradigm. The orbital and spin symmetry of the superconducting order parameter is argued to be highly non-universal and dependent on the details of the underlying band structure. We introduce a minimal two-orbital model for the Fe-pnictides characterized by non-degenerate orbitals that strongly mix with each other. They correspond to the iron "d_xy" orbital and to an effective combination of "d_zx" and "d_zy", respectively. Using this effective model we perform RPA calculations of susceptibilities and effective pairing interactions. We find that spin and orbital fluctuations are, generally, strongly coupled and we identify the parameters that control this coupling as well as the relative strength of various channels.

expanded version, 9+ pages, 6 color figures

References in corpus (8)

• Superconductivity at 41 K and its competition with spin-density-wave instability in layered CeO${}_{1-x}$F${}_x$FeAs
• Observation of Fermi-surface-dependent nodeless superconducting gaps in Ba0.6K0.4Fe2As2
• Thorium-doping induced superconductivity up to 56 K in Gd1-xThxFeAsO
• Superconductivity at 25 K in hole doped $(L{a}_{1-x}S{r}_x)OFeAs$
• Origin of the ~150 K Anomaly in LaOFeAs; Competing Antiferromagnetic Superexchange Interactions, Frustration, and Structural Phase Transition
• Superconductivity at 52 K in iron-based F-doped layered quaternary compound Pr[O1-xFx]FeAs
• The BCS-like gap in superconductor SmFeAsO_0.85F_0.15
• Proximity of antiferromagnetism and superconductivity in LaO${}_{1-x}$F${}_x$FeAs: effective Hamiltonian from ab initio studies