Absence of a Bulk Thermodynamic Phase Transition to aDensity Wave Phase in UTe2

Published

June 20, 2024

Author(s)

Florian Theuss, Avi Shragai, Gael Grissonnanche, Luciano Peralta, Ian Hayes, Shanta Saha, Yun Eo, Alonso Suarez, Andrea Capa Salinas, Ganesh Pokharel, Stephen Wilson, Nicholas Butch, Johnpierre Paglione

Abstract

Competing and intertwined orders are ubiquitous in strongly correlated electron systems, such as the charge, spin, and superconducting orders in the high-Tc cuprates. Recent scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) measurements provide evidence for a charge density wave (CDW) that coexists with superconductivity in the heavy Fermion metal UTe2. This CDW persists up to at least 7.5 K and, as a CDW breaks the translational symmetry of the lattice, its disappearance is necessarily accompanied by thermodynamic phase transition. Here, we report high-precision thermodynamic measurements of the elastic moduli of UTe2. We observe no signature of a phase transition in the elastic moduli down to a level of 4 parts in 108, strongly implying the absence of bulk CDW order in UTe2. We suggest that the CDW and associated pair density wave (PDW) observed by STM may be confined to the surface of the material, and thus not directly related to the bulk superconducting order parameter of UTe2.

Citation

Nature Physics

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

superconductivity, ultrasound

Citation

Theuss, F. , Shragai, A. , Grissonnanche, G. , Peralta, L. , Hayes, I. , Saha, S. , Eo, Y. , Suarez, A. , Capa Salinas, A. , Pokharel, G. , Wilson, S. , Butch, N. and Paglione, J. (2024), Absence of a Bulk Thermodynamic Phase Transition to aDensity Wave Phase in UTe2, Nature Physics (Accessed July 4, 2025)