Reconstructing the bulk Fermi surface and the superconducting gap properties from Neutron Scattering experiments

Abstract

We develop an analytical tool to extract bulk electronic properties of unconventional superconductors through inelastic neutron scattering (INS) spectra. Since the spin excitation spectrum in the superconducting (SC) state originates from Bogoliubov quasiparticle scattering associated with Fermi surface nesting, its energy-momentum relation--the so called `hour-glass' feature--can be inverted to reveal the Fermi momentum dispersion of the single-particle spectrum as well as the corresponding SC gap function. The inversion procedure is analogous to the quasiparticle interference (QPI) effect in scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). Whereas angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and STM provide surface sensitive information, our inversion procedure provides bulk electronic properties. The technique is essentially model independent and can be applied to a wide variety of materials.