Extreme magnetic field-boosted superconductivity

Sheng Ran; I-Lin Liu; Yun Suk Eo; Daniel J Campbell; Paul M Neves; Wesley T Fuhrman; Shanta R Saha; Christopher Eckberg; Hyunsoo Kim; David Graf; Fedor Balakirev; John Singleton; Johnpierre Paglione; Nicholas P Butch

doi:10.1038/s41567-019-0670-x

Extreme magnetic field-boosted superconductivity

Nat Phys. 2019;15(12):10.1038/s41567-019-0670-x. doi: 10.1038/s41567-019-0670-x.

Authors

Sheng Ran^{1

2

3}, I-Lin Liu^{1

2

3}, Yun Suk Eo¹, Daniel J Campbell¹, Paul M Neves¹, Wesley T Fuhrman¹, Shanta R Saha^{1

2}, Christopher Eckberg¹, Hyunsoo Kim¹, David Graf⁴, Fedor Balakirev⁵, John Singleton^{5

6}, Johnpierre Paglione^{1

2}, Nicholas P Butch^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
² NIST Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA.
³ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
⁴ National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA.
⁵ National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA.
⁶ Department of Physics, The Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.

Abstract

Applied magnetic fields underlie exotic quantum states, such as the fractional quantum Hall effect¹ and Bose-Einstein condensation of spin excitations². Superconductivity, however, is inherently antagonistic towards magnetic fields. Only in rare cases^3-5 can these effects be mitigated over limited fields, leading to re-entrant superconductivity. Here, we report the coexistence of multiple high-field re-entrant superconducting phases in the spin-triplet superconductor UTe₂ (ref. ⁶). We observe superconductivity in the highest magnetic field range identified for any re-entrant superconductor, beyond 65 T. Although the stability of superconductivity in these high magnetic fields challenges current theoretical models, these extreme properties seem to reflect a new kind of exotic superconductivity rooted in magnetic fluctuations⁷ and boosted by a quantum dimensional crossover⁸.

Grants and funding

9999-NIST/ImNIST/Intramural NIST DOC/United States