Fluctuation-enhanced electron-phonon coupling in FeSe

TL;DR

This study investigates how uniaxial strain influences phonon-electron interactions in FeSe near its nematic transition, revealing strain-dependent enhancements in two-phonon scattering linked to symmetry-breaking fluctuations.

Contribution

It introduces uniaxial strain as a controllable parameter to probe intrinsic lattice responses and fluctuation-driven electron-phonon coupling in FeSe without disorder effects.

Findings

Strain enhances the visibility of symmetry-breaking phonon anomalies.

Fluctuations near the nematic transition increase phonon-electron coupling.

Two-phonon scattering is highly sensitive to strain direction and magnitude.

Abstract

The interactions among lattice, charge, and spin degrees of freedom fundamentally shape material properties. In FeSe, symmetry-breaking perturbations serve as highly sensitive probes of these couplings. Previous work has shown that defects and isoelectronic substitution can substantially alter these interactions, giving rise to additional phonon modes. In this study, uniaxial strain is employed as a tunable symmetry-breaking control parameter to probe the intrinsic lattice response in the absence of disorder. The temperature evolution of phonon excitations was examined with fine temperature resolution in the vicinity of the nemato-structural transition temperature $T_s$, under strain applied along the $\langle 110 \rangle$ and $\langle 100 \rangle$ crystallographic directions. A subtle asymmetry of the $A_{1g}^{ph}$ mode appears in the unstrained crystal within a narrow temperature window around $T_s$, originating from the emergence of an additional mode in the fully symmetric channel. With applied strain, this feature becomes more distinctly resolved. The anomaly is attributed to modifications of the coupling between lattice and electronic degrees of freedom driven by the ordering fluctuations right above the nematic transition. These fluctuations enhance susceptibility for phonon-electron-phonon coupling in the vicinity of the X and R points of the Brillouin zone and promote two-phonon scattering close to the $A_{1g}^{ph}$ mode. The presence of this two-phonon scattering depends on both the strength and the direction of the applied strain, indicating a high sensitivity of FeSe to local symmetry breaking.