| Abstract: | Our recent scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) studies of the NaFe1-xCoxAs phase diagram over a wide range of dopings and temperatures are reviewed. Similar to the high-T c cuprates, the iron-based superconductors lie in close proximity to a magnetically ordered phase. Therefore, it is widely believed that magnetic interactions or fluctuations play an important role in triggering their Cooper pairings. Among the key issues regarding the electronic phase diagram are the properties of the parent spin density wave (SDW) phase and the superconducting (SC) phase, as well as the interplay between them. The NaFe1-xCoxAs is an ideal system for resolving these issues due to its rich electronic phases and the charge-neutral cleaved surface. In our recent work, we directly observed the SDW gap in the parent state, and it exhibits unconventional features that are incompatible with the simple Fermi surface nesting picture. The optimally doped sample has a single SC gap, but in the underdoped regime we directly viewed the microscopic coexistence of the SDW and SC orders, which compete with each other. In the overdoped regime we observed a novel pseudogap-like feature that coexists with superconductivity in the ground state, persists well into the normal state, and shows great spatial variations. The rich electronic structures across the phase diagram of NaFe1-xCoxAs revealed here shed important new light for defining microscopic models of the iron-based superconductors. In particular, we argue that both the itinerant electrons and local moments should be considered on an equal footing in a realistic model. |
