  The mechanism of Cooper pair formation in iron-based superconductors remains
a controversial topic. The main question is whether spin or orbital
fluctuations are responsible for the pairing mechanism. To solve this problem,
a crucial clue can be obtained by examining the remarkable enhancement of
magnetic neutron scattering signals appearing in a superconducting phase. The
enhancement is called spin resonance for a spin fluctuation model, in which
their energy is restricted below twice the superconducting gap value (2Ds),
whereas larger energies are possible in other models such as an orbital
fluctuation model. Here we report the doping dependence of low-energy magnetic
excitation spectra in Ba1-xKxFe2As2 for 0.5<x<0.84 studied by inelastic neutron
scattering. We find that the behavior of the spin resonance dramatically
changes from optimum to overdoped regions. Strong resonance peaks are observed
clearly below 2Ds in the optimum doping region, while they are absent in the
overdoped region. Instead, there is a transfer of spectral weight from energies
below 2Ds to higher energies, peaking at values of 3Ds for x = 0.84. These
results suggest a reduced impact of magnetism on Cooper pair formation in the
overdoped region.
