Nearly ferromagnetic spin-triplet superconductivity

Sheng Ran; Chris Eckberg; Qing-Ping Ding; Yuji Furukawa; Tristin Metz; Shanta R Saha; I-Lin Liu; Mark Zic; Hyunsoo Kim; Johnpierre Paglione; Nicholas P Butch

doi:10.1126/science.aav8645

Nearly ferromagnetic spin-triplet superconductivity

Science. 2019 Aug 16;365(6454):684-687. doi: 10.1126/science.aav8645.

Authors

Sheng Ran^{1

2}, Chris Eckberg², Qing-Ping Ding³, Yuji Furukawa³, Tristin Metz², Shanta R Saha^{4

2}, I-Lin Liu^{4

2

5}, Mark Zic², Hyunsoo Kim², Johnpierre Paglione^{4

2}, Nicholas P Butch^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ NIST Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA. sran@umd.edu nbutch@umd.edu.
² Department of Physics, Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
³ Ames Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA.
⁴ NIST Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA.
⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.

PMID: 31416960
DOI: 10.1126/science.aav8645

Abstract

Spin-triplet superconductors potentially host topological excitations that are of interest for quantum information processing. We report the discovery of spin-triplet superconductivity in UTe₂, featuring a transition temperature of 1.6 kelvin and a very large and anisotropic upper critical field exceeding 40 teslas. This superconducting phase stability suggests that UTe₂ is related to ferromagnetic superconductors such as UGe₂, URhGe, and UCoGe. However, the lack of magnetic order and the observation of quantum critical scaling place UTe₂ at the paramagnetic end of this ferromagnetic superconductor series. A large intrinsic zero-temperature reservoir of ungapped fermions indicates a highly unconventional type of superconducting pairing.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.