Magnetotransport as a probe for the interplay between Sm and Fe magnetism in SmFeAsO

Abstract The complex magnetic ordering of parent compounds of most unconventional superconductors is crucial for the understanding of high temperature superconductivity. Within this framework, we have performed temperature dependent magneto-transport experiments on a single crystal of SmFeAsO, a parent compound of iron pnictide superconductors. We observe multiple features in the measured transport properties at temperatures below the antiferromagnetic ordering of Sm, T < TNSm, which evolve with in-plane magnetic field, suggesting a rich variety of metamagnetic transitions never observed before in this compound. Considering that transport mainly involves Fe d orbitals at the Fermi lever, these findings suggest that the features originate from magnetic transitions of the Fe moments sublattice, which in turns may be induced by magnetic transitions of the Sm moments sublattice, via the interaction between Fe and Sm moments.We draw a possible scenario where the Fe moments, strongly affected by the Sm ordering below TNSm, reorder to an in-plane canted antiferromagnetic structure, which is washed out by the application of an in-plane magnetic field up to 9 T. Our work evidences that transport properties are a valuable tool to investigate magnetic orderings in iron pnictide parent compounds, where the interplay of magnetism and superconductivity is believed to be the origin of high temperature superconductivity.