Interplay between Superconductivity and Magnetism in Fe1-xPdxTe

Abstract

The love/hate relationship between superconductivity and magnetic ordering has fascinated the condensed matter physics community for a century. In the early days, magnetic impurities doped into a superconductor were found to quickly suppress superconductivity. Later, a variety of systems, such as cuprates, heavy fermions and Fe pnictides, show superconductivity in a narrow region near the border to antiferromagnetism (AFM) as a function of pressure or doping. On the other hand, the coexistence of superconductivity and ferromagnetic (FM) or AFM ordering is found in a few compounds (RRh4B4 (R = Nd, Sm, Tm, Er), R'Mo6X8 (R' = Tb, Dy, Er, Ho, and X = S, Se), UMGe (M = Ge, Rh, Co), CeCoIn5, EuFe2(As1-xPx)2 etc.), providing evidence for their compatibility. Here, we present a third situation, where superconductivity coexists with FM and near the border of AFM in Fe1-xPdxTe. The doping of Pd for Fe gradually suppresses the first-order AFM ordering at temperature TN/S, and turns into short-range (SR) AFM correlation with a characteristic peak in magnetic susceptibility at T'N. Superconductivity sets in when T'N reaches zero. However, there is a gigantic ferromagnetic dome imposed in the superconducting-AFM (SR) crossover regime. Such a system is ideal for studying the interplay between superconductivity and two types of magnetic interactions (FM and AFM).