Sensitivity of the superconducting state and magnetic susceptibility to key aspects of electronic structure in ferropnictides

TL;DR

This paper investigates how variations in electronic structure and interactions in ferropnictides influence the superconducting gap's nature, revealing conditions that favor either fully gapped or nodal states through a 5-orbital spin fluctuation model.

Contribution

It demonstrates how the presence and tuning of the hole pocket at ( extpi, extpi) affect the pairing symmetry and gap structure in ferropnictides using RPA-based orbital pairing analysis.

Findings

The hole pocket at ( extpi, extpi) stabilizes the isotropic s^ state.

Doping and surface effects can tune the gap from fully gapped to nodal.

Orbital pairing vertices link electronic structure to superconducting gap form.

Abstract

Experiments on the iron-pnictide superconductors appear to show some materials where the ground state is fully gapped, and others where low-energy excitations dominate, possibly indicative of gap nodes. Within the framework of a 5-orbital spin fluctuation theory for these systems, we discuss how changes in the doping, the electronic structure or interaction parameters can tune the system from a fully gapped to nodal sign-changing gap with s-wave ($A_{1g}$) symmetry ($s^\pm$). In particular we focus on the role of the hole pocket at the $(\pi,\pi)$ point of the unfolded Brillouin zone identified as crucial to the pairing by Kuroki {\it et al.}, and show that its presence leads to additional nesting of hole and electron pockets which stabilizes the isotropic $s^\pm$ state. The pocket's contribution to the pairing can be tuned by doping, surface effects, and by changes in interaction parameters, which we examine. Analytic expressions for orbital pairing vertices calculated within the RPA fluctuation exchange approximation allow us to draw connections between aspects of electronic structure, interaction parameters, and the form of the superconducting gap.