The iron chalcogenide Fe(1+y)(Te(1-x)Se(x)) is structurally the simplest of the Fe-based superconductors. Although the Fermi surface is similar to iron pnictides, the parent compound Fe(1+y)Te exhibits antiferromagnetic order with an in-plane magnetic wave vector (pi,0) (ref. 6). This contrasts the pnictide parent compounds where the magnetic order has an in-plane magnetic wave vector (pi,pi) that connects hole and electron parts of the Fermi surface. Despite these differences, both the pnictide and chalcogenide Fe superconductors exhibit a superconducting spin resonance around (pi,pi) (refs 9, 10, 11). A central question in this burgeoning field is therefore how (pi,pi) superconductivity can emerge from a (pi,0) magnetic instability. Here, we report that the magnetic soft mode evolving from the (pi,0)-type magnetic long-range order is associated with weak charge carrier localization. Bulk superconductivity occurs as magnetic correlations at (pi,0) are suppressed and the mode at (pi, pi) becomes dominant for x>0.29. Our results suggest a common magnetic origin for superconductivity in iron chalcogenide and pnictide superconductors.

Laser powder bed fusion additive manufacturing is an emerging 3D printing technique for the fabrication of advanced metal components. Widespread adoption of it and similar additive technologies is hampered by poor understanding of laser-metal interactions under such extreme thermal regimes. Here, we elucidate the mechanism of pore formation and liquid-solid interface dynamics during typical laser powder bed fusion conditions using in situ X-ray imaging and multi-physics simulations. Pores are revealed to form during changes in laser scan velocity due to the rapid formation then collapse of deep keyhole depressions in the surface which traps inert shielding gas in the solidifying metal. We develop a universal mitigation strategy which eliminates this pore formation process and improves the geometric quality of melt tracks. Our results provide insight into the physics of laser-metal interaction and demonstrate the potential for science-based approaches to improve confidence in components produced by laser powder bed fusion.

Measuring how the magnetic correlations evolve in doped Mott insulators has greatly improved our understanding of the pseudogap, non-Fermi liquids and high-temperature superconductivity. Recently, photo-excitation has been used to induce similarly exotic states transiently. However, the lack of available probes of magnetic correlations in the time domain hinders our understanding of these photo-induced states and how they could be controlled. Here, we implement magnetic resonant inelastic X-ray scattering at a free-electron laser to directly determine the magnetic dynamics after photo-doping the Mott insulator Sr2IrO4. We find that the non-equilibrium state, 2 ps after the excitation, exhibits strongly suppressed long-range magnetic order, but hosts photo-carriers that induce strong, non-thermal magnetic correlations. These two-dimensional (2D) in-plane Néel correlations recover within a few picoseconds, whereas the three-dimensional (3D) long-range magnetic order restores on a fluence-dependent timescale of a few hundred picoseconds. The marked difference in these two timescales implies that the dimensionality of magnetic correlations is vital for our understanding of ultrafast magnetic dynamics.

We report the observation of a bulk charge modulation in La1.88Sr0.12CuO4 (LSCO) with a characteristic in-plane wave-vector of (0.236, ±δ), with δ=0.011 r.l.u. The transverse shift of the ordering wave-vector indicates the presence of rotated charge-stripe ordering, demonstrating that the charge ordering is not pinned to the Cu-O bond direction. On cooling through the superconducting transition, we find an abrupt change in the growth of the charge correlations and a suppression of the charge order parameter indicating competition between the two orderings. Orthorhombic LSCO thus helps bridge the apparent disparities between the behavior previously observed in the tetragonal "214" cuprates and the orthorhombic yttrium and bismuth-based cuprates and thus lends strong support to the idea that there is a common motif to charge order in all cuprate families.

Hydrothermal synthesis is challenging in metal oxide systems with diverse polymorphism, as reaction products are often sensitive to subtle variations in synthesis parameters. This sensitivity is rooted in the non-equilibrium nature of low-temperature crystallization, where competition between different metastable phases can lead to complex multistage crystallization pathways. Here, we propose an ab initio framework to predict how particle size and solution composition influence polymorph stability during nucleation and growth. We validate this framework using in situ X-ray scattering, by monitoring how the hydrothermal synthesis of MnO2 proceeds through different crystallization pathways under varying solution potassium ion concentrations ([K+] = 0, 0.2, and 0.33 M). We find that our computed size-dependent phase diagrams qualitatively capture which metastable polymorphs appear, the order of their appearance, and their relative lifetimes. Our combined computational and experimental approach offers a rational and systematic paradigm for the aqueous synthesis of target metal oxides.

We demonstrate a close relationship between superconductivity and the dimensions of the Fe-Se(Te) tetrahedron in FeSe0.5Te0.5. This is done by exploiting thin film epitaxy, which provides controlled biaxial stress, both compressive and tensile, to distort the tetrahedron. The Se/Te height within the tetrahedron is found to be of crucial importance to superconductivity, in agreement with the scenario that (π, π) spin fluctuations promote superconductivity in Fe superconductors.

Although all superconducting cuprates display charge-ordering tendencies, their low-temperature properties are distinct, impeding efforts to understand the phenomena within a single conceptual framework. While some systems exhibit stripes of charge and spin, with a locked periodicity, others host charge density waves (CDWs) without any obviously related spin order. Here we use resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) to follow the evolution of charge correlations in the canonical stripe ordered cuprate La 1.875 Ba 0.125 CuO 4 (LBCO 1/8) across its ordering transition. We find that hightemperature charge correlations are unlocked from the wavevector of the spin correlations, signaling analogies to CDW phases in various other cuprates. This indicates that stripe order at low temperatures is stabilized by the coupling of otherwise independent charge and spin density waves, with important implications for the relation between charge and spin correlations in the cuprates.Charge density waves | Stripes | Superconductivity | Cuprates W hen holes are doped into the Mott insulating parent compounds of the cuprates, multiple competing interactions conspire to form a rich phase diagram. In the underdoped regime, holes can save energy by clustering together on neighboring sites in order to minimize the number of broken magnetic bonds, but by doing so they pay an extra energy cost of the increased inter-site Coulomb repulsion and reduced kinetic energy. Several early theoretical works suggested that frustration between these different ordering tendencies generates an instability towards spin density wave (SDW) order (1-5) and low-energy incommensurate SDW correlations were indeed observed around the same time (6-8). Such considerations were key to the discovery of "stripes" in the La2−x−y(Nd/Eu)y(Sr/Ba)xCuO4 or 214 family of cuprates. These correlations were found to be strongest at a doping level of 1/8 for which static spin and charge order forms at wavevectors related by a factor of two (9, 10). This phase was often conceptualized in terms of a dominant spin degree of freedom, as the underdoped cuprates have a large magnetic energy scale and a relatively small electronic density of states at the Fermi level (1-5). Furthermore, although high-temperature spin correlations were easily seen (7,8,10), directly detecting high-temperature charge correlations proved beyond the sensitivity of standard x-ray and neutron scattering measurements. Most compellingly, charge and spin ordering appeared, until recently, to be absent in cuprates in which there was a low-energy spin gap such as YBa2Cu3O6+x (YBCO), Bi1.5Pb0.5Sr1.54CaCu2O 8+δ (BSCCO2212), and HgBa2CuO 4+δ (HBCO1201), so the discovery of CDW correlations in these systems generated great interest (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19). While the similarity of CDW phase diagrams in these materials may indicate a unified CDW mechanism (20, 21), many of the CDW properties reported in these materials were, however, notably different than that in LBCO 1/8. The CDW incommensurability...

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