Nesting of electron and hole Fermi surfaces in non-superconducting BaFe₂P₂

We report detailed measurements of the de Haas-van Alphen (dHvA) effect in BaFe_2P_2 which is the end member of the superconducting series, BaFe_2(As_{1-x}P_x)_2. Using high purity samples we are able to observe dHvA oscillations from all the sheets of Fermi surface and hence build up a complete detailed picture of its structure. The results show the existence of a highly warped section of hole surface which may be the origin of the nodal gap structure in this series. Importantly, we find that, even for this non-superconducting end member, one of the hole surfaces almost exactly nests with the inner electron surface. This suggests that improved geometric nesting does not drive the increase in pairing strength with decreasing x in this system.