Absence of a Bulk Signature of a Charge Density Wave in Hard X-ray Measurements of UTe2

Published

October 9, 2024

Author(s)

Caitlin Kengle, Dipanjan Chaudhuri, Xuefei Guo, Thomas Johnson, Simon Bettler, Wolfgang Simeth, Matthew Krogstad, Zahir Islam, Sheng Ran, Shanta Saha, Johnpierre Paglione, Nicholas Butch, Eduardo Fradkin, Vidya Madhavan, Peter Abbamonte

Abstract

The long-sought pair density wave (PDW) is an exotic phase of matter in which charge density wave (CDW) order is intertwined with the amplitude or phase of coexisting, superconducting order. Originally predicted to exist in copper-oxides, circumstantial evidence for PDW order now exists in a variety of materials. Recently, scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) studies have reported evidence for a three-component CDW at the surface of the heavy-fermion superconductor, UTe2, persisting below its superconducting transition temperature [Aishwarya et al., Nature 618, 928933 (2023); Gu et al., ibid. 618, 921927 (2023); LaFleur et al., Nat. Commun. 15, 4456 (2024)]. Here, we use hard x-ray diffraction measurements on crystals of UTe2 at T = 1.9 and 12 K to search for a bulk signature of this CDW. Using STM measurements as a constraint, we calculate the expected locations of CDW superlattice peaks and sweep a large volume of reciprocal space in search of a signature. We fail to find any evidence for a CDW near any of the expected superlattice positions in many Brillouin zones. We estimate an upper bound on the CDW lattice distortion of umax  4 × 10−3 Å. Our results suggest that the CDW observed in STM is either purely electronic, somehow lacking a signature in the lattice, or is restricted to the material surface.

Citation

Physical Review B

Volume

110

Issue

14

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.110.145101

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Keywords

charge density wave, x-ray diffraction

Citation

Kengle, C. , Chaudhuri, D. , Guo, X. , Johnson, T. , Bettler, S. , Simeth, W. , Krogstad, M. , Islam, Z. , Ran, S. , Saha, S. , Paglione, J. , Butch, N. , Fradkin, E. , Madhavan, V. and Abbamonte, P. (2024), Absence of a Bulk Signature of a Charge Density Wave in Hard X-ray Measurements of UTe2, Physical Review B, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.110.145101, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=959077 (Accessed October 10, 2025)