Evidence for d-wave superconductivity of infinite-layer nickelates from low-energy electrodynamics

Bing Cheng; Di Cheng; Kyuho Lee; Liang Luo; Zhuoyu Chen; Yonghun Lee; Bai Yang Wang; Martin Mootz; Ilias E Perakis; Zhi-Xun Shen; Harold Y Hwang; Jigang Wang

doi:10.1038/s41563-023-01766-z

Evidence for d-wave superconductivity of infinite-layer nickelates from low-energy electrodynamics

Nat Mater. 2024 Jan 5. doi: 10.1038/s41563-023-01766-z. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Bing Cheng¹, Di Cheng², Kyuho Lee^{3

4}, Liang Luo², Zhuoyu Chen^{3

5

6}, Yonghun Lee^{3

5}, Bai Yang Wang^{3

4}, Martin Mootz^{2

7}, Ilias E Perakis⁸, Zhi-Xun Shen^{3

4

5}, Harold Y Hwang^{3

5}, Jigang Wang^{9

10}

Affiliations

¹ Ames National Laboratory, Ames, IA, USA. bcheng2@ameslab.gov.
² Ames National Laboratory, Ames, IA, USA.
³ Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA.
⁴ Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
⁵ Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
⁶ Department of Physics, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China.
⁷ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA.
⁸ Department of Physics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA.
⁹ Ames National Laboratory, Ames, IA, USA. jgwang@ameslab.gov.
¹⁰ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA. jgwang@ameslab.gov.

PMID: 38182811
DOI: 10.1038/s41563-023-01766-z

Abstract

The discovery of superconductivity in infinite-layer nickelates established another category of unconventional superconductors that shares structural and electronic similarities with cuprates. However, key issues of the superconducting pairing symmetry, gap amplitude and superconducting fluctuations are yet to be addressed. Here we utilize static and ultrafast terahertz spectroscopy to address these. We demonstrate that the equilibrium terahertz conductivity and non-equilibrium terahertz responses of an optimally Sr-doped nickelate film (superconducting transition temperature of T_c = 17 K) are in line with the electrodynamics of d-wave superconductivity in the dirty limit. The gap-to-T_c ratio (2Δ/k_BT_c) is found to be 3.4, indicating that the superconductivity falls in the weak coupling regime. In addition, we observed substantial superconducting fluctuations near T_c that do not extend into the deep normal state as the optimally hole-doped cuprates do. Our results support a d-wave system that closely resembles the electron-doped cuprates.