Nematic state of the FeSe superconductor

We study the crystal structure of the tetragonal iron selenide FeSe and its nematic phase transition to the low-temperature orthorhombic structure using synchrotron x-ray and neutron scattering analyzed in both real space and reciprocal space. We show that in the local structure the orthorhombic distortion associated with the electronically driven nematic order is more pronounced at short length scales. It also survives to temperatures above 90 K, where reciprocal-space analysis suggests tetragonal symmetry. Additionally, the real-space pair distribution function analysis of the synchrotron x-ray diffraction data reveals a tiny broadening of the peaks corresponding to the nearest Fe-Fe, nearest Fe-Se, and next-nearest Fe-Se bond distances as well as the tetrahedral torsion angles at a short length scale of 20 angstrom. This broadening appears below 20 K and is attributed to a pseudogap. However, we did not observe any further reduction in local symmetry below orthorhombic down to 3 K. Our results suggest that the superconducting gap anisotropy in FeSe is not associated with any symmetry-lowering short-range structural correlations.