Bridging atomic and mesoscopic length scales with Replica Scanning Tunneling Microscopy: Visualizing the intra-unit cell pair density modulation of superconducting FeSe at micron length scale
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2026
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| author | Velasco, Miguel Águeda Bermúdez-Pérez, Jose D. Talavera, Pablo García Sánchez-Barquilla, Raquel Moreno, Jose Antonio Schmidt, Juan Bud'ko, Sergey L. Canfield, Paul C. Knebel, Georg Patino, Midori Amano Lapertot, Gerard Flouquet, Jacques Brison, Jean Pascal Aoki, Dai Giraldo-Gallo, Paula Galvis, Jose Augusto Guillamón, Isabel Vasco, Edwin Herrera Suderow, Hermann |
| author_facet | Velasco, Miguel Águeda Bermúdez-Pérez, Jose D. Talavera, Pablo García Sánchez-Barquilla, Raquel Moreno, Jose Antonio Schmidt, Juan Bud'ko, Sergey L. Canfield, Paul C. Knebel, Georg Patino, Midori Amano Lapertot, Gerard Flouquet, Jacques Brison, Jean Pascal Aoki, Dai Giraldo-Gallo, Paula Galvis, Jose Augusto Guillamón, Isabel Vasco, Edwin Herrera Suderow, Hermann |
| contents | Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) is a cornerstone technique for visualizing the electronic density of states with atomic resolution (typically below 0.1 nm). While the field of view of most STM setups extends up to a few microns, obtaining atomic resolution over these large areas is often impractical and excessively time-consuming. This is due to the need to acquire maps with a point number reaching 107 or more with a full current or conductance vs voltage curve at each point. The standard procedure is to make large scale maps and then select small regions to zoom-in for high-resolution atomic scale analysis. However, this approach fails to address a question which is often critical: Does a specific atomic-scale modulation of the electronic density of states persist over much larger, mesoscopic length scales? Here we present a new method: Replica STM (R-STM), that overcomes this limitation, allowing the study of atomic-scale phenomena up to micron length scales. We obtained new large-area STM tunneling conductance maps in UTe2 and FeSe, spanning areas over 200 nm in size. In these large scale maps we discovered signals with wavelengths significantly exceeding interatomic distances. We show that these large-wavelength signals are replicas of the underlying atomic-scale density of states modulations. R-STM leverages these replica signals to efficiently track atomic-scale features over large areas. Using this novel technique, we show that the pair density modulation discovered recently in FeSe persists with the same characteristic wavelength up to hundreds of nm length scales. R-STM provides a powerful and practical new capability for STM to compare atomic scale with micrometer scale phenomena. The proof of principle of R-STM can be extended to any other scanning probe microscopy experiment where a periodic signal is traced as a function of position. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_19678 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Bridging atomic and mesoscopic length scales with Replica Scanning Tunneling Microscopy: Visualizing the intra-unit cell pair density modulation of superconducting FeSe at micron length scale Velasco, Miguel Águeda Bermúdez-Pérez, Jose D. Talavera, Pablo García Sánchez-Barquilla, Raquel Moreno, Jose Antonio Schmidt, Juan Bud'ko, Sergey L. Canfield, Paul C. Knebel, Georg Patino, Midori Amano Lapertot, Gerard Flouquet, Jacques Brison, Jean Pascal Aoki, Dai Giraldo-Gallo, Paula Galvis, Jose Augusto Guillamón, Isabel Vasco, Edwin Herrera Suderow, Hermann Superconductivity Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Other Condensed Matter Strongly Correlated Electrons Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) is a cornerstone technique for visualizing the electronic density of states with atomic resolution (typically below 0.1 nm). While the field of view of most STM setups extends up to a few microns, obtaining atomic resolution over these large areas is often impractical and excessively time-consuming. This is due to the need to acquire maps with a point number reaching 107 or more with a full current or conductance vs voltage curve at each point. The standard procedure is to make large scale maps and then select small regions to zoom-in for high-resolution atomic scale analysis. However, this approach fails to address a question which is often critical: Does a specific atomic-scale modulation of the electronic density of states persist over much larger, mesoscopic length scales? Here we present a new method: Replica STM (R-STM), that overcomes this limitation, allowing the study of atomic-scale phenomena up to micron length scales. We obtained new large-area STM tunneling conductance maps in UTe2 and FeSe, spanning areas over 200 nm in size. In these large scale maps we discovered signals with wavelengths significantly exceeding interatomic distances. We show that these large-wavelength signals are replicas of the underlying atomic-scale density of states modulations. R-STM leverages these replica signals to efficiently track atomic-scale features over large areas. Using this novel technique, we show that the pair density modulation discovered recently in FeSe persists with the same characteristic wavelength up to hundreds of nm length scales. R-STM provides a powerful and practical new capability for STM to compare atomic scale with micrometer scale phenomena. The proof of principle of R-STM can be extended to any other scanning probe microscopy experiment where a periodic signal is traced as a function of position. |
| title | Bridging atomic and mesoscopic length scales with Replica Scanning Tunneling Microscopy: Visualizing the intra-unit cell pair density modulation of superconducting FeSe at micron length scale |
| topic | Superconductivity Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Other Condensed Matter Strongly Correlated Electrons |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.19678 |