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Phys. Rev. B 78, 184517 (2008) [6 pages]

Pressure-induced volume-collapsed tetragonal phase of CaFe2As2 as seen via neutron scattering

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A. Kreyssig1,2,*, M. A. Green3,4, Y. Lee1,2, G. D. Samolyuk1,2, P. Zajdel3,5, J. W. Lynn3, S. L. Bud’ko1,2, M. S. Torikachvili6, N. Ni1,2, S. Nandi1,2, J. B. Leão3, S. J. Poulton3,4, D. N. Argyriou7, B. N. Harmon1,2, R. J. McQueeney1,2, P. C. Canfield1,2, and A. I. Goldman1,2
1Ames Laboratory, US DOE, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA
2Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA
3NIST Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899, USA
4Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA
5Department of Chemistry, University College of London, 20 Gordon Street, London W1X 0AJ, United Kingdom
6Department of Physics, San Diego State University, San Diego, California 92182, USA
7Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie, Glienicker Str. 100, 14109 Berlin, Germany

Received 16 October 2008; revised 28 October 2008; published 24 November 2008

Recent investigations of the superconducting iron-arsenide families have highlighted the role of pressure, be it chemical or mechanical, in fostering superconductivity. Here we report that CaFe2As2 undergoes a pressure-induced transition to a nonmagnetic volume “collapsed” tetragonal phase, which becomes superconducting at lower temperature. Spin-polarized total-energy calculations on the collapsed structure reveal that the magnetic Fe moment itself collapses, consistent with the absence of magnetic order in neutron diffraction.

© 2008 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.78.184517
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevB.78.184517
PACS:
74.62.Fj, 61.50.Ks, 61.05.fm, 71.15.Nc

*kreyssig@ameslab.gov