Temperature dependence of the resonance and low energy spin excitations in superconducting FeTe$_{0.6}$Se$_{0.4}$

TL;DR

This study investigates how low-energy spin excitations in superconducting FeTe$_{0.6}$Se$_{0.4}$ vary with temperature, revealing a neutron spin resonance that diminishes above $T_c$ but is not directly linked to the superconducting gap.

Contribution

It provides detailed temperature-dependent measurements of spin excitations in FeTe$_{0.6}$Se$_{0.4}$, highlighting differences from similar modes in other iron-based superconductors.

Findings

Resonance intensity decreases with temperature and disappears above $T_c$.

Resonance energy remains weakly temperature dependent and vanishes above $T_c$.

The mode is not directly associated with the superconducting electronic gap.

Abstract

We use inelastic neutron scattering to study the temperature dependence of the low-energy spin excitations in single crystals of superconducting FeTe$_{0.6}$Se$_{0.4}$ ($T_c=14$ K). In the low-temperature superconducting state, the imaginary part of the dynamic susceptibility at the electron and hole Fermi surfaces nesting wave vector $Q=(0.5,0.5)$, $\chi^{\prime\prime}(Q,\omega)$, has a small spin gap, a two-dimensional neutron spin resonance above the spin gap, and increases linearly with increasing $\hbar\omega$ for energies above the resonance. While the intensity of the resonance decreases like an order parameter with increasing temperature and disappears at temperature slightly above $T_c$, the energy of the mode is weakly temperature dependent and vanishes concurrently above $T_c$. This suggests that in spite of its similarities with the resonance in electron-doped superconducting BaFe$_{2-x}$(Co,Ni)$_x$As$_2$, the mode in FeTe$_{0.6}$Se$_{0.4}$ is not directly associated with the superconducting electronic gap.