Abstract: Materials with strongly correlated electrons can give rise to interesting and useful phenomena, such as nematicity, magnetism, and unconventional superconductivity. In these systems, the charge, spin, and lattice degrees of freedom become intertwined, such that the origin of these phenomena becomes obscured. In this talk, I will discuss a new experimental platform which combines tunable applied strain, transport measurements, and several x-ray techniques to probe the origin and mechanisms of strongly correlated phases. I will review three recent studies in iron-based superconductors, which examine (1) the transport-structural correspondence in the nematic phase of doped BaFe2As2, (2) the orbital driver of nematicity in FeSe, and (3) the mechanism of field-induced superconductivity in ferromagnetic doped EuFe2As2. These diverse investigations demonstrate the power and promise of multimodal characterization for solving other puzzles in strongly correlated materials.
References:
Sanchez, et al. Nature Materials (2021) DOI: 10.1038/s41563-021-01082-4
Occhialini and Sanchez, et al., Nature Materials (2023) DOI: 10.1038/s41563-023-01585-2
Sanchez, et al. Science Advances (2023) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adj520