Kirsty Scott

In the field of quantum materials, many aspects of unconventional superconductors are persistently not well understood. This is, in part, due to their complex phase diagrams, which feature multiple coexisting phases. However, the same intertwined phases that complicate our ability to unravel these phase diagrams may be responsible for mediating superconductivity. In this work, we turn our focus to these phases: nematicity in Fe-based superconductors, charge order in cuprates, and magnetism in nickelates. In the Fe-based superconductor, FeSe_1-xS_x, we perform scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) studies to image nematic fluctuations and their effect on superconducting symmetries, revealing the first experimental evidence of superconductivity mediated by nematic fluctuations. In the cuprate superconductor, Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O_s+x, we conduct a series of resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) experiments to prove the charge-like nature of a novel quasi-circular manifold of correlations and dissect the origin of an unidentified RIXS mode. In the n = 8 Ruddlesden-Popper nickelate parent compound and its oxygen-reduced counterpart, we conduct the first RIXS studies and track their magnetic excitations.