We determined the crystal-field split Hund's rule ground state of the non-centrosymmetric heavy fermion superconductor CePt3Si with polarization dependent soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and polarized neutron scattering. We are also able to give the sequence of the crystal-field states from the temperature evolution of the linear dichroic signal in the XAS. The quantitative analysis of the XAS temperature dependence together with the neutron transition energies complete the identification of the crystal-field level scheme.
The theoretical studies on the electronic and lattice properties of the series of non-centrosymmetric superconductors ThTSi, where T = Co, Ni, Ir, and Pt are presented. The electronic band structure and crystal parameters were optimized within the density functional theory. The spin-orbit coupling leads to the splitting of the electronic bands and Fermi surfaces, with the stronger effect observed for the compounds with the heavier atoms Ir and Pt. The possible mixing of the spin-singlet and spin-triplet pairing in the superconducting state is discussed. The phonon dispersion relations and phon…
We have investigated magnetic structures of the centrosymmetrric skyrmion material Gd2PdSi3 by means of polarized neutron scattering near zero field with an isotope-160Gd-enriched single crystal. In a previous study, magnetic structures in Gd2PdSi3 at low temperatures were studied by resonant X-ray scattering measurements [T. Kurumaji et al. Science 365, 914 (2019)]. The present polarized neutron results confirm that the magnetic structure in zero field has elliptic screw-type magnetic modulation with a propagation vector of (q, 0, 0) with q ~ 0.14 and its equivalents. As the temperature incre…
We report synthesis of non-centrosymmetric BiPd single crystal by self flux method. The BiPd single crystal is crystallized in monoclinic structure with the P21 space group. Detailed SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy) results show that the crystals are formed in slab like morphology with homogenous distribution of Bi and Pd. The magnetic susceptibility measurement confirmed that the BiPd compound is superconducting below 4K. Further, BiPd exhibits weak ferromagnetism near the superconducting transition temperature in isothermal magnetization (MH) measurements. The temperature dependent electri…
Charge acceleration during an intense light field application to solids attracts much attention as elementary processes in high-harmonic generation and photoelectron emission [1-7]. For manipulating such attosecond dynamics of charge, carrier-envelope-phase (CEP:relative phase between carrier oscillation of light field and its envelope function) control has been employed in insulators, nanometal and graphene [8-10]. In superconducting materials, collective control of charge motion is expected because of its strongly coherent nature of quasi-particles. Here, in a layered organic superconductor,…
The search for topological superconductors (TSCs) is one of the most urgent contemporary problems in condensed matter systems. TSCs are characterized by a full superconducting gap in the bulk and topologically protected gapless surface (or edge) states. Within each vortex core of TSCs, there exist the zero energy Majorana bound states, which are predicted to exhibit non-Abelian statistics and to form the basis of the fault-tolerant quantum computation. So far, no stoichiometric bulk material exhibits the required topological surface states (TSSs) at Fermi level combined with fully gapped bulk …
We report the first comprehensive microscopic description of the thermal fluctuations tuned Fermi surface characteristics in a non-centrosymmetric superconductor, in presence of an in-plane Zeeman field. Using a non perturbative approach we demonstrate that short range fluctuating superconducting pair correlations give rise to segmentation of the Fermi surface with direction dependent pair breaking and hotspots for quasiparticle scattering. Further, a fluctuation driven change in the Fermi surface topology is realized, characterized by a shift of the corresponding Dirac point from the trivial …
We investigate the superconducting properties of Sc$_{5}$Co$_{4}$Si$_{10}$ using low-temperature resistivity, magnetization, heat capacity, and muon-spin rotation and relaxation ($μ$SR) measurements. We find that Sc$_{5}$Co$_{4}$Si$_{10}$ {exhibits type-II} superconductivity with a superconducting transition temperature $T_\mathrm{C}= 3.5 (1)$\,K. The temperature dependence of the superfluid density obtained from transverse-field $μ$SR spectra is best modeled using an isotropic Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer type $s$-wave gap symmetry with $2Δ/k_\mathrm{B}T_\mathrm{C} = 2.84(2)$. However, the zero-…
We propose a route to achieve odd-parity spin-triplet superconductivity in metallic collinear antiferromagnets with inversion symmetry. Owing to the existence of hidden antiunitary symmetry, which we call the effective time-reversal symmetry (eTRS), the Fermi surfaces of ordinary antiferromagnetic metals are generally spin-degenerate, and spin-singlet pairing is favored. However, by introducing a local inversion symmetry breaking perturbation that also breaks the eTRS, we can lift the degeneracy to obtain spin-polarized Fermi surfaces. In the weak-coupling limit, the spin-polarized Fermi surfa…
Enhancement of Superconducting Transition Temperature due to the strong Antiferromagnetic Spin Fluctuations in Non-centrosymmetric Heavy-fermion Superconductor CeIrSi3 :A 29Si-NMR Study under Pressure
Comparative study of the centrosymmetric and non-centrosymmetric superconducting phases of Re3W using muon-spin spectroscopy and heat capacity measurements
When metal becomes superconducting, new optical excitation channels are created by particle-hole mixing. These excitation channels contribute negligibly to optical responses in most superconductors, but they can be relevant in ultra-strong-coupling superconductors that are close to the Bose-Einstein condensate regime. Recently, selection rules for these excitations have been formulated based on single-particle anti-unitary symmetries in the mean-field theory. While being potentially useful for studying optical properties of ultra-strong-coupling superconductors, they had fundamental limitation…
We report polarized neutron scattering measurements of the low energy spin fluctuations of the iron-selenide superconductor Li$_{0.8}$Fe$_{0.2}$ODFeSe below and above its superconducting transition temperature $T_c=41$ K. Our experiments confirmed that the resonance mode near 21 meV is magnetic. Moreover, the spin excitations are essentially isotropic in spin space at 5$\leq E\leq$ 29 meV in the superconducting and normal states. Our results suggest that the resonance mode in iron-based superconductors becomes isotropic when the influence of spin-orbit coupling and magnetic/nematic order is mi…
Recently a new family of Cr-based A2Cr3As3 (A = K, Rb, Cs) superconductors were reported, which own a rare quasi-one-dimensional (Q1D) crystal structure with infinite (Cr3As3)2- chains and exhibit intriguing superconducting characteristics possibly derived from spin-triplet electron pairing. The crystal structure of A2Cr3As3 is actually a slight variation of the hexagonal TlFe3Te3 prototype although they have different lattice symmetry. Here we report superconductivity in a 133-type KCr3As3 compound that belongs to the latter structure. The single crystals of KCr3As3 were prepared by the deint…
Recently the influence of antisymmetric spin-orbit coupling has been studied in novel topological superconductors such as half-Heuslers and artificial hetero-structures. We investigate the effect of Rashba and/or Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings on the band structure and topological properties of a two-dimensional noncentrosymetric superconductor. For this goal, the topological helical edge modes are analyzed for different spin-orbit couplings as well as for several superconducting pairing symmetries. To explore the transport properties, we examine the response of the spin-polarized edge state…
