Electron-boson spectral density of LiFeAs obtained from optical data

Abstract

We analyze existing optical data in the superconducting state of LiFeAs at T'='4'K, to recover its electron-boson spectral density. A maximum entropy technique is employed to extract the spectral density I2χ(ω) from the optical scattering rate. Care is taken to properly account for elastic impurity scattering which can importantly affect the optics in an s-wave superconductor, but does not eliminate the boson structure. We find a robust peak in I2χ(ω) centered about ΩR≅' 8.0'meV or 5.3'kBTc (with Tc ='17.6'K). Its position in energy agrees well with a similar structure seen in scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS). There is also a peak in the inelastic neutron scattering (INS) data at this same energy. This peak is found to persist in the normal state at T'='23'K. There is evidence that the superconducting gap is anisotropic as was also found in low temperature angular resolved photoemission (ARPES) data. © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd.