Distinctive orbital anisotropy observed in the nematic state of a FeSe thin film

Abstract

Nematic state, where the system is translationally invariant but breaks the rotational symmetry, has drawn great attentions recently due to experimental observations of such a state in both cuprates and iron-based superconductors. The mechanism of nematicity that is likely tied to the pairing mechanism of high-T<sub>c</sub>, however, still remains controversial. Here, we studied the electronic structure of multilayer FeSe film by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). We found that the FeSe film enters the nematic state around 125 K, while the electronic signature of long range magnetic order has not been observed down to 20K indicating the non-magnetic origin of the nematicity. The band reconstruction in the nematic state is characterized by the splitting of the d<sub>xz</sub> and d<sub>yz</sub> bands. More intriguingly, such energy splitting is strong momentum dependent with the largest band splitting of ~80 meV at the zone corner. The simple on-site ferro-orbital ordering is insufficient to reproduce the nontrivial momentum dependence of the band reconstruction. Instead, our results suggest that the nearest-neighbor hopping of d<sub>xz</sub> and d<sub>yz</sub> is highly anisotropic in the nematic state, the origin of which holds the key in understanding the nematicity in iron-based superconductors.