Theoretical study of impurity-induced magnetism in FeSe

Abstract

Experimental evidence suggests that FeSe is close to a magnetic instability, and recent scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) measurements on FeSe multilayer films have revealed stripe order locally pinned near defect sites. Motivated by these findings, we perform a theoretical study of locally induced magnetic order near nonmagnetic impurities in a model relevant for FeSe. We find that relatively weak repulsive impurities indeed are capable of generating short-range magnetism, and explain the driving mechanism for the local order by resonant eg-orbital states. In addition, we investigate the importance of orbital-selective self-energy effects relevant for Hund's metals, and show how the structure of the induced magnetization cloud gets modified by orbital selectivity. Finally, we make concrete connection to STM measurements of iron-based superconductors by symmetry arguments of the induced magnetic order, and the basic properties of the Fe Wannier functions relevant for tunneling spectroscopy.