Abstract
Unconventional superconductivity often emerges at the border of long-range magnetic orders. Understanding the low-energy charge dynamics may provide crucial information on the formation of superconductivity. Here we report the unpolarized/polarized optical conductivity study of high quality MnP single crystals at ambient pressure. Our data reveal two types of charge carriers with very different lifetimes. In combination with the first-principles calculations, we show that the short-lifetime carriers have flat Fermi sheets which become gapped in the helimagnetic phase, causing a dramatic change in the low-frequency optical spectra, while the long-lifetime carriers are anisotropic three-dimensional like which are little affected by the magnetic transitions and provide major contributions to the transport properties. This orbital-dependent charge dynamics originates from the special crystal structure of MnP and may have an influence on the unconventional superconductivity and its interplay with helimagnetism at high pressures.
Highlights
Magnetic quantum fluctuations at the border of long-range antiferromagnetic or ferromagnetic orders have been generally believed to be the major pairing force for unconventional superconductivity
We find that the low-frequency metallic responses in the ferromagnetic phase can be best understood as a sum of two Drude components, one of which has a very short lifetime and becomes gapped along the b-axis in the helimagnetic phase, causing a dramatic change in the low-frequency optical spectra crossing the ferro-helimagnetic phase transition
Our results reveal an orbital-dependent helimagnetic phase transition and suggest a microscopic two-fluid picture for the charge dynamics in MnP
Summary
Magnetic quantum fluctuations at the border of long-range antiferromagnetic or ferromagnetic orders have been generally believed to be the major pairing force for unconventional superconductivity. We find that the low-frequency metallic responses in the ferromagnetic phase can be best understood as a sum of two Drude components, one of which has a very short lifetime and becomes gapped along the b-axis in the helimagnetic phase, causing a dramatic change in the low-frequency optical spectra crossing the ferro-helimagnetic phase transition. This indicates two types of charge carriers with very different lifetimes. These put a constraint on any serious microscopic model and may have an influence on the interplay between unconventional superconductivity and helimagnetism at high pressures
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