Susceptibility anisotropy in an iron arsenide superconductor revealed by x-ray diffraction in pulsed magnetic fields

Abstract

In addition to unconventional high-Tc superconductivity, the iron arsenides exhibit strong magnetoelastic coupling and a notable electronic anisotropy within the a-b plane. We relate these properties by studying underdoped Ba(Fe{1-x}Co{x})2As2 by x-ray diffraction in pulsed magnetic fields up to 27.5 Tesla. We exploit magnetic detwinning effects to demonstrate anisotropy in the in-plane susceptibility, which develops at the structural phase transition despite the absence of magnetic order. The degree of detwinning increases smoothly with decreasing temperature, and a single- domain condition is realized over a range of field and temperature. At low temperatures we observe an activated behavior, with a large hysteretic remnant effect. Detwinning was not observed within the superconducting phase for accessible magnetic fields.

5 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Evidence for an electron nematic phase transition in underdoped iron pnictide superconductors
• Theory of Electron Nematic Order in LaOFeAs
• Determination of the phase diagram of the electron doped superconductor Ba(Fe${}_{1-x}$Co${}_x$)${}_2$As${}_2$
• Ising and Spin orders in Iron-based Superconductors

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• Study of antiferromagnetic and nematic phase transitions in $BaF{e}_2(A{s}_{1-x}{P}_x{)}_2$ by AC micro-calorimetry and SQUID magnetometry
• Magnetic detwinning and biquadratic magnetic interaction in EuFe2As2 revealed by 153Eu NMR
• Disorder-induced time effect in the antiferromagnetic domain state of Fe1+yTe