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Discovery of orbital-selective Cooper pairing in FeSe

Cornell Affiliated Author(s)

Author

P.O. Sprau
A. Kostin
A. Kreisel
A.E. Böhmer
V. Taufour
P.C. Canfield
S. Mukherjee
P.J. Hirschfeld
B.M. Andersen
J.C.S. Davis

Abstract

The superconductor iron selenide (FeSe) is of intense interest owing to its unusual nonmagnetic nematic state and potential for high-temperature superconductivity. But its Cooper pairing mechanism has not been determined. We used Bogoliubov quasiparticle interference imaging to determine the Fermi surface geometry of the electronic bands surrounding the Γ = (0, 0) and X = (π/aFe, 0) points of FeSe and to measure the corresponding superconducting energy gaps. We show that both gaps are extremely anisotropic but nodeless and that they exhibit gap maxima oriented orthogonally in momentum space. Moreover, by implementing a novel technique, we demonstrate that these gaps have opposite sign with respect to each other. This complex gap configuration reveals the existence of orbital-selective Cooper pairing that, in FeSe, is based preferentially on electrons from the dyz orbitals of the iron atoms. © 2017, American Association for the Advancement of Science. All rights reserved.

Date Published

Journal

Science

Volume

357

Issue

6346

Number of Pages

75-80,

URL

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85024104320&doi=10.1126%2fscience.aal1575&partnerID=40&md5=8e2f68648ac92658cd7716bd0af76e3f

DOI

10.1126/science.aal1575

Group (Lab)

J.C. Seamus Davis Group

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