# Strain tuning and anisotropic spin correlations in iron-based systems

## TL;DR

This paper investigates how strain influences nematic and magnetic phase transitions in iron-based superconductors, revealing that strain sensitivity arises from spin fluctuations and anisotropic magnetic excitations, with implications for understanding related vestigial phases.

## Contribution

It provides a theoretical framework explaining strain effects on nematicity and magnetic transitions, emphasizing the role of spin fluctuations and anisotropic magnetic spectra in iron-based systems.

## Key findings

- Strain sensitivity is primarily a fluctuation effect.
- Antisymmetric strain strongly affects magnetic excitations.
- The formalism can be extended to other magnetic vestigial phases.

## Abstract

Nematic order in the iron-based superconductors is closely tied to a lattice distortion and a structural transition from tetragonal to orthorhombic symmetry. External stress of the appropriate symmetry acts as a conjugate field of the nematic order parameter and can be utilized to detwin nematic domains but also smears an otherwise sharp nematic transition. On the other hand, applying stress in proper symmetry channels allows one to tune the nematic phase transition. Recent experiments analyzed the stress-induced changes of the nematic and magnetic phase transition temperature. Here we show that the observed trends can be understood in terms of spin-induced nematicity. The strain sensitivity is shown to be a fluctuation effect. The strong sensitivity to antisymmetric strain is a consequence of the anisotropic nature of the magnetic excitation spectrum. The formalism presented here can be naturally generalized to determine the strain-sensitivity of vestigial phases related to other magnetic states that have been observed in the iron-based systems, such as e.g.\ the spin-charge density wave and the spin-vortex crystals.