Normal State Correlated Electronic Structure of Iron Pnictides

TL;DR

This paper uses LDA+DMFT to analyze the electronic structure of Fe-pnictide superconductors, revealing strong correlations and pseudogap formation, and compares well with experimental data, suggesting they are low-carrier, incoherent metals similar to cuprates.

Contribution

It provides a detailed correlated electronic structure analysis of Fe-pnictides using LDA+DMFT, highlighting the importance of multi-orbital correlations.

Findings

Identification of a pseudogap in the undistorted phase.

Good agreement between theoretical spectral functions and experiments.

Fe-pnictides are characterized as low-carrier, incoherent metals.

Abstract

We describe the correlated electronic structure of a prototype Fe-pnictide superconductor, $SmO_{1-x}F_{x}FeAs$, using LDA+DMFT. Strong, multi-orbital electronic correlations generate a low-energy pseudogap in the undistorted phase, giving a bad, incoherent metal in qualitative agreement with observations. Very good semi-quantitative agreement with the experimental spectral functions is seen, and interpreted, within a correlated, multi-orbital picture. Our results show that Fe-pnictides should be understood as low-carrier density, incoherent metals, in resemblance to the underdoped cuprate superconductors.