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QUANTUM MATERIALS

Orbital-selective metals

Nature Materials volume 17, pages 855–856 (2018)Cite this article

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The metallic state of an iron chalcogenide superconductor is demonstrated to be characterized by the simultaneous presence of itinerant carriers with different degrees of correlation. This orbital-selective metal arises from a sizeable Hund’s coupling.

One of the milestones of solid-state physics is the Landau theory of normal Fermi liquids, which describes why the electrons in metals behave in many respects like non-interacting particles despite the Coulomb interaction. The Fermi-liquid theory is also a pillar of the Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer theory, which explains the origin and the properties of the superconducting state, in which the electrons in a solid form Cooper pairs and give rise to a quantum state with zero electrical resistance that expels magnetic fields. Yet these theoretical frameworks are often challenged by the discovery of new materials, such as the discovery of high critical temperature (Tc) superconductivity in Fe-based materials ten years ago. In their recent study of the metallic state of the iron chalcogenide superconductor FeSe, published in Nature Materials, Andrey Kostin and colleagues1 have found clear evidence for a single quantum fluid in which electrons belonging to different orbitals have completely different quasiparticle properties. This is a direct observation of a Hund’s metal — a system where the electronic correlations are strongly influenced by the Hund’s exchange coupling2,3 — whose orbital-selective properties have been proposed as a key to understand the whole family of iron-based superconductors4.

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Fig. 1: Electronic band structure of FeSe.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) and CNR-IOM Democritos, Trieste, Italy

    Massimo Capone

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  1. Massimo Capone
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Correspondence to Massimo Capone.

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Capone, M. Orbital-selective metals. Nature Mater 17, 855–856 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-018-0173-7

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