Doping-insensitive density-of-states suppression in polycrystalline iron-based superconductor SmO1−xFxFeAs

Abstract We investigated the temperature dependence of the density-of-states in the iron-based superconductor SmO 1− x F x FeAs ( x =0,0.12,0.15,0.2) with high resolution angle-integrated photoemission spectroscopy. The density-of-states suppression is observed with decreasing temperature in all samples, revealing two characteristic energy scales (10 meV and 80 meV). However, no obvious doping dependence is observed. We argue that the 10 meV suppression is due to an anomalously doping-independent normal state pseudogap, which becomes the superconducting gap once in the superconducting state; and alert the possibility that the 80 meV-scale suppression might be an artifact of the polycrystalline samples.