Abstract
Here, we report a combined study of transport and thermodynamic measurements on the layered pnictide material SrAg4As2. Upon cooling, a drop in electrical and Hall resistivity, a jump in heat capacity, and an increase in susceptibility and magnetoresistance are observed around 110 K. All suggest nonmagnetic phase transitions emerge at around 110 K, likely associated with structural distortions. In sharp contrast with the first-principles calculations based on the crystal structure at room temperature, quantum oscillations reveal small Fermi pockets with light effective masses, suggesting significant change in the Fermi surface topology caused by the low-temperature structural distortion. No superconductivity emerges in SrAg4As2 down to 2 K under pressures up to 2.13 GPa; instead, the low-temperature structural distortion moves up linearly to high temperature at a rate of ≈13 K/GPa above 0.89 GPa.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 235130 |
Journal | Physical Review B |
Volume | 98 |
Issue number | 23 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 13 2018 |
Externally published | Yes |
Funding
Work at UCLA was supported by the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award No. DE-SC0011978. A.I.C. acknowledges an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellowship (Grant No. EP/I004475/1). Part of this work was supported by HFML-RU/FOM and LNCMI-CNRS, members of the European Magnetic Field Laboratory (EMFL), and by EPSRC (UK) via its membership to the EMFL (Grant No. EP/N01085X/1). Work at Rutgers was supported by the NSF DMREF program under the award NSF DMREF Project No. DMR-1435918. N.N. acknowledges useful discussion with G. Xin and Professor W. Xie.