Pair density modulation from nematic superconductivity in systems with intra-unit-cell symmetry breaking
4 affiliations
- 1Department of Physics and Texas Center for Superconductivity at University of Houston (TcSUH), University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA. [email protected]
- 2Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA
- 3T. J. Watson Laboratory of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, 1200 East California Boulevard, Pasadena, California, USA
- 4Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Abstract
Pair density modulation is a phenomenon recently observed in exfoliated flakes of iron-based superconductors, in which the superconducting gap oscillates strongly with the same periodicity as the underlying crystalline lattice. We propose a model that explains this modulation in systems with broken intra-unit-cell symmetries through the emergence of nematic superconductivity, which further breaks the four-fold rotation symmetry. This results in a sublattice texture on the Fermi surface, aligned with the anisotropic superconducting gap of the nematic s± + d state. This gives rise to distinctive gap maxima and minima located on the two inequivalent iron sublattices while still being a zero-momentum pairing state. We discuss how further investigation of such modulations can give insight into the nature of the superconducting pairing, such as the signs of the order parameters and visualization of a phase transition to a mixed two-component state using local probes. The authors present a theoretical mechanism for the recently-observed pair density modulation in exfoliated flakes of the iron-based superconductor FeTe0.55Se0.45. The mechanism is based on the appearance of a nematic mixed s± + d superconducting phase in a system with broken glide mirror symmetry.
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BibTeX
@article{papaj2026pair,
title = {{Pair density modulation from nematic superconductivity in systems with intra-unit-cell symmetry breaking}},
author = {Michał Papaj and Lingyuan Kong and Stevan Nadj-Perge and Patrick A. Lee},
journal = {Nature Communications},
year = {2026},
month = jun,
doi = {10.1038/s41467-026-74221-7},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-74221-7},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Pair density modulation from nematic superconductivity in systems with intra-unit-cell symmetry breaking
AU - Michał Papaj
AU - Lingyuan Kong
AU - Stevan Nadj-Perge
AU - Patrick A. Lee
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/06/12
JO - Nature Communications
DO - 10.1038/s41467-026-74221-7
UR - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-74221-7
AB - Pair density modulation is a phenomenon recently observed in exfoliated flakes of iron-based superconductors, in which the superconducting gap oscillates strongly with the same periodicity as the underlying crystalline lattice. We propose a model that explains this modulation in systems with broken intra-unit-cell symmetries through the emergence of nematic superconductivity, which further breaks the four-fold rotation symmetry. This results in a sublattice texture on the Fermi surface, aligned with the anisotropic superconducting gap of the nematic s± + d state. This gives rise to distinctive gap maxima and minima located on the two inequivalent iron sublattices while still being a zero-momentum pairing state. We discuss how further investigation of such modulations can give insight into the nature of the superconducting pairing, such as the signs of the order parameters and visualization of a phase transition to a mixed two-component state using local probes. The authors present a theoretical mechanism for the recently-observed pair density modulation in exfoliated flakes of the iron-based superconductor FeTe0.55Se0.45. The mechanism is based on the appearance of a nematic mixed s± + d superconducting phase in a system with broken glide mirror symmetry.
SN - 2041-1723
ER -