Correlation effects in the iron pnictides

One of the central questions about the iron pnictides concerns the extent to which their electrons are strongly correlated. Here, we address this issue through the phenomenology of the charge transport and dynamics, the single-electron excitation spectrum, and magnetic ordering and dynamics. We outline the evidence that the parent compounds, while metallic, have electron interactions that are sufficiently strong to produce incipient Mott physics. In other words, in terms of the strength of electron correlations compared with the kinetic energy, the iron pnictides are closer to intermediately coupled systems lying at the boundary between itinerancy and localization, such as V2O3 or Se-doped NiS2, rather than to simple antiferromagnetic metals like Cr. This level of electronic correlations produces a new small parameter for controlled theoretical analysis, namely the fraction of the single-electron spectral weight that lies in the coherent part of the excitation spectrum. Using this expansion parameter, we construct the effective low-energy Hamiltonian and discuss its implications for the magnetic order and magnetic quantum criticality. Finally, this approach sharpens the notion of magnetic frustration for such a metallic system, and brings about a multiband matrix t-J(1)-J(2) model for the carrier-doped iron pnictides.