Spatially modulated heavy-fermion superconductivity in CeIrIn5
Maja D. Bachmann, G. M. Ferguson, Florian Theuss, Tobias Meng, Carsten Putzke, Toni Helm, K. R. Shirer, You-Sheng Li, K. A. Modic, Michael Nicklas, Markus Koeni… 展开作者
Maja D. Bachmann, G. M. Ferguson, Florian Theuss, Tobias Meng, Carsten Putzke, Toni Helm, K. R. Shirer, You-Sheng Li, K. A. Modic, Michael Nicklas, Markus Koenig, D. Low, Sayak Ghosh, Andrew P. Mackenzie, Frank Arnold, Elena Hassinger, Ross D. McDonald, Laurel E. Winter, Eric D. Bauer, Filip Ronning, B. J. Ramshaw, Katja C. Nowack, Philip J. W. Moll
The ability to spatially modulate the electronic properties of solids has led to landmark discoveries in condensed matter physics as well as new electronic applications. Although crystals of strongly correlated metals exhibit a diverse set of electronic ground states, few approaches to spatially modulating their properties exist. Here we demonstrate spatial control over the superconducting state in mesoscale samples of the canonical heavy-fermion superconductor CeIrIn5. We use a focused ion beam (FIB) to pattern crystals on the microscale, which tailors the strain induced by differential thermal contraction into specific areas of the device. The resulting non-uniform strain fields induce complex patterns of superconductivity due to the strong dependence of the transition temperature on the strength and direction of strain. Electrical transport and magnetic imaging of devices with different geometry show that the obtained spatial modulation of superconductivity agrees with predictions based on finite element simulations. These results present a generic approach to manipulating electronic order on micrometer length scales in strongly correlated matter.
The interplay of superconductivity with electronic and structural instabilities on the kagome lattice provides a fertile ground for the emergence of unusual phenomena. The vanadium-based kagome metals $A$V$_3$Sb$_5$ ($A=$ K, Rb, Cs) exhibit superconductivity on an almost ideal kagome lattice, with the superconducting transition temperature $T_{\rm c}$ forming two domes upon pressure-tuning. The first dome arises from the competition between superconductivity and a charge-density-wave, whereas the origin for the second dome remains unclear. Herein, we show that the appearance of the second supe…
Modulated superconductivity due to vacancy and magnetic order in $A_x$Fe$_{2-x/2}$Se$_2$ [$A=$Cs, K, (Tl,Rb), (Tl,K)] iron-selenide superconductors
本文计算了铁硒化物超导体的“调制”超导态。零动量$d-$波配对打破了$I4/mmm$空间群的常规BaFe $_2$ Se $_2$类晶体的平移对称性。当Fe空位形成有序状态时，这种配对状态变得相容，并且晶体对称性变为低温$I4/m$对称性。对于在$Q_v=(1/5, 3/5)$在K $_{0.82(2)}$ Fe $_{1.626(3)}$ Se $_2$的一个无公度空位顺序的具体情况下，我们发现，它诱导块棋盘形反铁磁相波矢量${\bf Q}_m=4{\bf Q}_v$。空位有序和磁有序的共存导致了一个重建的基态，它自然地耦合到$d-$波超导在一个统一的相位，我们建议将是一个一般的耦合所有的铁硒化物超导体。我们的结果与迄今为止的大量实验数据一致。因此，我们建议，不可分割性导致多个相的均匀共存，作为一个可行的替代方案，在高- $T_c$超导体的纳米级相分离，并发挥重要作用，在增强超导性。
We study theoretically the onset of nonuniform superconductivity in a one-dimensional single wire in presence of Zeeman (or exchange field) and spin-orbit coupling. Using the Green's function formalism, we show that the spin-orbit coupling stabilizes modulated superconductivity in a broad range of temperatures and Zeeman fields. We investigate the anisotropy of the temperature-Zeeman field phase diagram, which is related to the orientation of the Zeeman field. In particular, the inhomogeneous superconducting state disappears if this latter field is aligned or perpendicular to the wire directio…
In superfluid $^3$He-B confined in a slab geometry, domain walls between regions of different order parameter orientation are predicted to be energetically stable. Formation of the spatially-modulated superfluid stripe phase has been proposed. We confined $^3$He in a 1.1 $μ$m high microfluidic cavity and cooled it into the B phase at low pressure, where the stripe phase is predicted. We measured the surface-induced order parameter distortion with NMR, sensitive to the formation of domains. The results rule out the stripe phase, but are consistent with 2D modulated superfluid order.
The high critical temperature superconductor Lanthanum Barium Copper Oxide (La2-xBaxCuO4 or LBCO) exhibits a strong anomaly in critical temperature at 1/8th doping, nematicity, and other interesting properties. We report here Scanning Superconducting Quantum Interference Device (SQUID) imaging of the magnetic fields and susceptibility in a number of thin film LBCO samples with doping in the vicinity of the 1/8th anomaly. Spatially resolved measurements of the critical temperatures of these samples do not show a pronounced depression at 1/8th doping. They do, however, exhibit strong, nearly lin…
Magnetic texture modulated superconductivity in superconductor/ferromagnet shells of semiconductor nanowires
Stanford University（斯坦福大学）；SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory（SLAC国家加速器实验室）；Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen（哥本哈根大学尼尔斯·玻尔研究所）；Universidad de Chile（智利大学）；Danish Fundamental Metrology（丹麦基础计量）；Universidad de Santiago de Chile（圣地亚哥德智利大学）
Recently the evidence of the helical magnetic structure modulated along $c$-axis with the period of four lattice parameters was obtained in easy $ab$ plane ferromagnetic superconductor EuRbFe$_4$As$_4$ [K. Iida et al., Phys. Rev. B 100, 014506 (2019)]. We argue that such structure may appear due to the presence of superconductivity. In spite of the very small value of the exchange field acting on the superconducting electrons in EuRbFe$_4$As$_4$, the exchange mechanism of interaction between superconductivity and ferromagnetism could dominate over the electromagnetic one and this circumstance …
The second layer of $^4$He films adsorbed on a graphite substrate is an excellent experimental platform to study the interplay between superfluid and structural orders. Here, we report a rigid two-frequency torsional oscillator study on the second layer as a function of temperature and $^4$He atomic density. We find that the superfluid density is independent of frequency, which can be interpreted as unequivocal evidence of genuine superfluidity. The phase diagram established in this work reveals that a superfluid phase coexists with hexatic density-wave correlation and a registered solid phase…
Photoexcitations on a superconductor using ultrafast nir-infrared (NIR) pulses, whose energy is much higher than the superconducting energy gap, are expected to suppress/destroy superconductivity by breaking Cooper pairs and excite quasiparticles from occupied state to unoccupied state far above the Fermi level. This appears to be true only for small pumping fluence. Here we show that the intense NIR pumping has different effect. We perform an intense NIR pump, c-axis terahertz probe measurement on an electron-doped cuprate superconductor Pr$_{0.88}$LaCe$_{0.12}$CuO$_4$ with T$_c$=22 K. The me…
We report the discovery of superconductivity in binary alloy Sn$_{1-x}$Sb$_{x}$ with $x$ in the range of 0.43 to 0.6, which possesses a modulated rhombohedral structure due to the incommensurate ordering of Sn and Sb layers along the $c$-axis. The specific heat measurements indicate a weakly coupled, fully gapped superconducting state in this homogeneity range with a maximum bulk $T_{\rm c}$ of 1.58 K at $x$ = 0.46, though the electronic specific heat and Hall coefficients remain nearly $x$-independent. The nonmonotonic dependence of the bulk $T_{\rm c}$ is discussed in relation to the effects…
In condensed matter systems, zero-dimensional or one-dimensional Majorana modes can be realized respectively as the end and edge states of one-dimensional and two-dimensional topological superconductors. In this $\textit{top-down}$ approach, $(d-1)$-dimensional Majorana modes are obtained as the boundary states of a topologically nontrivial $d$-dimensional bulk. In a $\textit{bottom-up}$ approach instead, $d$-dimensional Majorana modes in a $d$-dimensional system can be realized as the continuous limit of a periodic lattice of coupled $(d-1)$-dimensional Majorana modes. We illustrate this idea…
The interplay of different emergent phenomena -- superconductivity (SC) and domain formation -- appearing on different spatial and energy scales are investigated using high-resolution scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) in the prototypical transition metal dichalcogenide superconductor $1T$-TaSSe single crystals ($T_{SC} = 3.2$ K) at temperatures from 1 to 20 K. Our major observation is that while the SC gap size smoothly varies on the scale of $\lesssim 10$ nm, its spatial distribution is not correlated to the domain structure. On the other hand, there is statistically significant correlati…
The charge density wave in the high-temperature superconductor YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{7-x}$ (YBCO) is now known to have two different ordering tendencies differentiated by their $c$-axis correlations. These correspond to ferro- (F-CDW) and antiferro- (AF-CDW) couplings between CDW in neighbouring CuO$_2$ bilayers. This discovery has prompted a number of fundamental questions. For example, how does superconductivity adjust to two competing orders and are either of these orders responsible for the electronic reconstruction? Here we use high-energy x-ray diffraction to study YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{6.67}$ as …
Superfluid dome in the spatially modulated two-dimensional XY model
Institute for Solid State Physics, The University of Tokyo（东京大学固体物理研究所）；Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems（马克斯·普朗克复杂系统物理研究所）；Department of Chemistry, Duke University（杜克大学化学系）；Trans-scale Quantum Science Institute, The University of Tokyo（东京大学跨尺度量子科学研究所）
Newly-discovered superconductor UTe$_2$ is a strong contender for a topological spin-triplet state wherein a multi-component order parameter arises from two nearly-degenerate superconducting states. A key issue is whether both of these states intrinsically exist at ambient pressure. Through thermal expansion and calorimetry, we show that UTe$_2$ at ambient conditions exhibits two detectable transitions only in some samples, and the size of the thermal expansion jump at each transition varies when the measurement is performed in different regions of the sample. This result indicates that the tw…
The interplay among various collective electronic states such as superconductivity (SC) and charge density wave (CDW) is of tremendous significance in low-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides. Thus far, a consensus on the relationship between SC and CDW has not been established in IrTe2, where either competing or collaboration pictures have been suggested in the bulk or thick flakes. Here, we use the state-of-art Au-assisted exfoliation method to overcome the obstacle of interlayer Te-Te bonding, cleaving the IrTe2 down to monolayer for the first time. A striking feature revealed by an…
Substitution modulated transition from semimetal to superconductor in ZrTe$_{2-x}$Se$_x$ with coexistence of nontrivial electronic topology
Escola de Engenharia de Lorena - DEMAR, Universidade de São Paulo（圣保罗大学洛雷纳工程学院-DEMAR）；Universidade Federal do ABC, Centro de Ciências Naturais e Humanas（ABC联邦大学自然与人文中心）；Instituto de Ciências Tecnológicas e Exatas, Universidade Federal do Triângulo Mineiro（米纳斯吉拉斯三角区联邦大学技术与科学研究所）；Chair of Computational Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)（洛桑联邦理工学院物理学院计算凝聚态物理讲席）
The binary ruthenate, RuO$_2$, has been the subject of intense interest due to its itinerant antiferromagnetism and strain-induced superconductivity. The strain mechanism and its effect on the microscopic electronic states leading to the normal and superconducting state, however, remain undisclosed. Here, we investigate highly-strained epitaxial (110) RuO$_2$ films using polarization-dependent oxygen K-edge X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS). Through the detection of pre-edge peaks, arising from O:$2p$ - Ru:$4d$ hybridization, we uncover the effects of epitaxial strain on the orbital/electron…
