Nearly Ferromagnetic Spin-Triplet Superconductivity

Published

August 18, 2019

Author(s)

Sheng N. Ran, Christoper Eckberg, Qing-Ping Ding, Yuji Furukawa, Tristin Metz, Shanta R. Saha, I Lin NMN Liu, Mark Zic, Hyunsoo Kim, Johnpierre N. Paglione, Nicholas Butch

Abstract

One of the most interesting differences between spin triplet superconductors and the conventional spin singlet variety is the two-component triplet order parameter that allows spin up and down electrons to couple with different strength. Such nonunitary superconductors, in which spin up and down components have different gaps and an intrinsic spin polarization, are ideal platforms for studying topological phenomena^1,2. So far, the only established examples of nonunitary pairing include the superfulid ³He in high magnetic fields³, known as the A1 phase, as well as ferromagnetic superconductors⁴. It is an intriguing question whether nonunitary pairing can happen in the absence of a magnetic field - external or internal - thus spontaneously breaking time reversal symmetry. Here we report the discovery of novel nonunitary spin-triplet superconductivity in UTe₂, which closely resembles the ferromagnetic syperconductrs^5-7 with dramatically enhanced transition temperature and upper critical field, and a paramagnetic normal state. UTe₂ exhibits the crucial ingredients of a nonunitary triplet superconducting state, namely: an extremely large, anisotropic upper critical field H_c2, temperature independent nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) Knight shift in the superconducting state that can only be due to triplet pairing and a large residual normal electronic density of states indicating that half of the electrons remain ungapped. In other words, a spin up superfluid coexists with a spin down Fermi liquid. This discovery yields a new platform for encoding information using topological excitations and for manipulation of spin-polarized currents.

Citation

Science

Volume

365

Issue

6454

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aav8645

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Keywords

triplet superconductivity, nonunitary pairing, quantum critical ferromagnet

Citation

Ran, S. , Eckberg, C. , Ding, Q. , Furukawa, Y. , Metz, T. , Saha, S. , Liu, I. , Zic, M. , Kim, H. , Paglione, J. and Butch, N. (2019), Nearly Ferromagnetic Spin-Triplet Superconductivity, Science, [online], https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aav8645, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=926908 (Accessed April 24, 2024)