High-temperature superconductivity from fine-tuning of Fermi-surface singularities in iron oxypnictides

Abstract

In the family of the iron-based superconductors, the $RE$FeAsO-type compounds (with $RE$ being a rare-earth metal) exhibit the highest bulk superconducting transition temperatures ($T_{\mathrm{c}}$) up to $55\text{K}$ and thus hold the key to the elusive pairing mechanism. Recently, it has been demonstrated that the intrinsic electronic structure of SmFe${}_{0.92}$Co${}_{0.08}$AsO ($T_{\mathrm{c}}=18\text{K}$) is highly nontrivial and consists of multiple band-edge singularities in close proximity to the Fermi level. However, it remains unclear whether these singularities are generic to the $RE$FeAsO-type materials and if so, whether their exact topology is responsible for the aforementioned record $T_{\mathrm{c}}$. In this work, we use angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) to investigate the inherent electronic structure of the NdFeAsO${}_{0.6}$F${}_{0.4}$ compound with a twice higher $T_{\mathrm{c}}=38\text{K}$. We find a similarly singular Fermi surface and further demonstrate that the dramatic enhancement of superconductivity in this compound correlates closely with the fine-tuning of one of the band-edge singularities to within a fraction of the superconducting energy gap $\Delta$ below the Fermi level. Our results provide compelling evidence that the band-structure singularities near the Fermi level in the iron-based superconductors must be explicitly accounted for in any attempt to understand the mechanism of superconducting pairing in these materials.

Open access article available online at http://www.nature.com/articles/srep18273

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