Spin-state transition in the Fe-pnictides
  We report a Fe K\beta x-ray emission spectroscopy study of local magnetic moments in the rare-earth doped iron pnictide Ca_{1-x}RE_xFe_2As_2 (RE=La, Pr, and Nd). In all samples studied the size of the Fe local moment is found to decrease significantly with temperature and goes from ~0.9 \mu_B at T = 300 K to ~0.45 \mu_B at T = 70 K. In the collapsed tetragonal (cT) phase of Nd- and Pr-doped samples (T<70K) the local moment is quenched, while the moment remains unchanged for the La-doped sample, which does not show lattice collapse. Our results show that Ca_{1-x}RE_xFe_2As_2 (RE= Pr and Nd) exhibits a spin-state transition and provide direct evidence for a non-magnetic Fe^{2+} ion in the cT-phase, as predicted by Yildirim. We argue that the gradual change of the the spin-state over a wide temperature range reveals the importance of multiorbital physics, in particular the competition between the crystal field split Fe 3d orbitals and the Hund's rule coupling. 
H. Gretarsson, S. R. Saha, T. Drye, J. Paglione, Jungho Kim, D. Casa,   T. Gog, W. Wu, S. R. Julian and Young-June Kim
cond-mat.supr-con cond-mat.str-el