Orbital ordering induces structural phase transition and the resistivity anomaly in iron pnictides

By W. Lv, Jiansheng Wu, P. Phillips. 2009

161 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We attribute the structural phase transition (SPT) in the parent compounds of the iron pnictides to orbital ordering. Due to the anisotropy of the $d_{xz}$ and $d_{yz}$ orbitals in the $xy$ plane, a ferro-orbital ordering makes the orthorhombic structure more energetically favorable, thus inducing the SPT. In this orbital-ordered system, the sites with orbitals that do not order have higher energies. Scattering of the itinerant electrons by these localized two-level systems causes a resistivity anomaly upon the onset of the SPT. The proposed orbital ordering also leads to the stripe-like anti-ferromagnetism and anisotropy of the magnetic exchanges. This model is quantitatively consistent with available experimental observations.

Subfields: Condensed Matter Physics, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a92e4d05df8e5a5cd495b669d8ddb45c3321431e

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In Condensed Matter Physics

1. Zhi-xun Shen
2. G. Stewart
3. R. Greene
4. J. Paglione

In Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

1. G. Stewart
2. Zhi-xun Shen
3. L. Degiorgi
4. Ian R. Fisher
5. R. Greene
6. J. Paglione
7. E. Dagotto

Citations in the corpus

• Superconductivity in iron compounds (2011, background): “Instead of the above explanation for the cause of TS, a number of theories (see, e.g., Lv, Wu, and Phillips, 2009; Turner, Wang, and Vishwanath, 2009; Lee, Yin, and Ku, 2009) as well as the experimental work of Martinelli et al. (2011) proposed instead that orbital ordering plays an important role…”
• In-plane electronic anisotropy of underdoped ‘122’ Fe-arsenide superconductors revealed by measurements of detwinned single crystals (2011, background): “…associated with partial filling of dxz and dyz states has inspired pictures in which the orbital degree of freedom plays an equally important role (Chen et al 2009, Lv et al 2009, Kruger et al 2009, Bascones et al 2010, Laad et al 2010, Valenzuela et al 2010, Yanagi et al 2010, Kontani et al 2011).”
• High-temperature superconductivity in iron-based materials (2010, background): “But one should not exclude the applicability of less simplistic forms of magnetic order, including orbital order [75], coexistent [76]”