Thermodynamics of transition to BCS-BEC crossover superconductivity in FeSe$_{1-x}$S$_x$

Abstract

The BCS-BEC crossover from strongly overlapping Cooper pairs to non-overlapping composite bosons in the strong coupling limit has been a long-standing issue of interacting many-body fermion systems. Recently, FeSe semimetal with hole and electron bands emerged as a high-$T_{\rm c}$ superconductor located in the BCS-BEC crossover regime, owing to its very small Fermi energies. In FeSe, however, an ordinary BCS-like heat-capacity jump is observed at $T_{\rm c}$, posing a fundamental question on the characteristics of the BCS-BEC crossover. Here we report on high-resolution heat capacity, magnetic torque, and scanning tunneling spectroscopy measurements in FeSe$_{1-x}$S$_x$. Upon entering the tetragonal phase at $x>0.17$, where nematic order is suppressed, $T_{\rm c}$ discontinuously decreases. In this phase, highly non-mean-field behaviors consistent with BEC-like pairing are found in the thermodynamic quantities with giant superconducting fluctuations extending far above $T_{\rm c}$, implying the change of pairing nature. Moreover, the pseudogap formation, which is expected in BCS-BEC crossover of single-band superconductors, is not observed in the tunneling spectra. These results illuminate highly unusual features of the superconducting states in the crossover regime with multiband electronic structure and competing electronic instabilities.