Fermi-surface topology and low-lying electronic structure of the iron-based superconductor Ca 10(Pt 3As 8)(Fe 2As 2) 5

Abstract

We report a study of low-energy electronic structure and Fermi surface topology for the recently discovered iron-based superconductor Ca 10(Pt 3As 8)(Fe 2As 2) 5 (the 10-3-8 phase, with T c∼8 K), via angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). Despite its triclinic crystal structure, ARPES results reveal a fourfold symmetric band structure with the absence of Dirac-cone-like Fermi dots (related to magnetism) found around the Brillouin zone corners in other iron-based superconductors. Considering that the triclinic lattice and structural supercell arise from the Pt 3As 8 intermediary layers, these results indicate that those layers couple only weakly to the FeAs layers in this new superconductor at least near the surface, which has implications for the determination of its pairing mechanism. © 2012 American Physical Society.