Non-Fermi Liquid due to Orbital Fluctuations in Iron Pnictide Superconductors

We study the influence of quantum fluctuations on the electron self energy in the normal state of iron-pnictide superconductors using a five orbital tight binding model with generalized Hubbard on-site interactions. Within a one-loop treatment, we find that an overdamped collective mode develops at low frequency in channels associated with quasi-1D $d_{xz}$ and $d_{yz}$ bands. When the critical point for the $C_4$ symmetry broken phase (structural phase transition) is approached, the overdamped collective modes soften, and acquire increased spectral weight, resulting in non-Fermi liquid behavior at the Fermi surface characterized by the frequency dependence of the imaginary part of electron self energy of the form $ω^λ$, $0<λ<1$. We argue that this non-Fermi liquid behavior is responsible for the recently observed zero-bias enhancement in the tunneling signal in quantum point contact spectroscopy. A key experimental test of this proposal is the absence of the non-Fermi liquid behaviour in the hole-doped materials. Our result suggests that quantum criticality plays an important role in understanding the normal state properties of iron-pnictide superconductors.

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