Spontaneously polarized half-gapped superconductivity in UTe<sub>2</sub>

ORAL

Abstract

We discovered novel nonunitary spin-triplet superconductivity in UTe2, with the highest Tc and Hc2 among all candidates. Superconducting state closely resembles that of ferromagnetic superconductors, but the normal state is paramagnetic and shows no indication of magnetic ordering. UTe2 exhibits an extremely large, anisotropic upper critical field Hc2, temperature independent NMR Knight shift in the superconducting state, and a large residual normal electronic density of states indicating that half of the electrons remain ungapped. All these results strongly indicate that the superconductivity in UTe2 is carried by nonunitary spin-triplet pairs. This discovery yields a new platform for encoding information using topological excitations and for manipulation of spin-polarized currents.

*Research at the University of Maryland was supported by the the National Science Foundation Division of Materials Research Award No. DMR-1610349, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundations EPiQS Initiative through Grant No. GBMF4419. Research at Ames Laboratory was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Officce of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering. Ames Laboratory is operated for the U.S. DOE by Iowa State University under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11358.

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Presenters

  • Sheng Ran

    • University of California, San Diego
    • University of Maryland, College Park & NIST

Authors

  • Sheng Ran

    • University of California, San Diego
    • University of Maryland, College Park & NIST

  • Chris Eckberg

    • University of Maryland, College Park

  • Qing-Ping Ding

    • Ames Laboratory, Iowa State University
    • Ames Laboratory
    • Ames Laboratory and Dept. of Phys. and Astro.,, Iowa State Univ.
    • Iowa State University & Ames Lab

  • Yuji Furukawa

    • Ames Laboratory, Iowa State University
    • Department of Physics, Iowa State University, Ames Laboratory, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA
    • Ames Laboratory and Dept. of Phys. and Astro.,, Iowa State Univ.
    • Iowa State University & Ames Lab
    • Ames Lab & Dept of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University
    • Iowa State University

  • Tristin E Metz

    • University of Maryland, College Park
    • Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park

  • Shanta Saha

    • Physics, University of Maryland
    • Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials, Department of Physics, University of Maryland
    • University of Maryland, College Park & NIST
    • Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park
    • University of Maryland
    • University of Maryland - College Park

  • I-Lin Liu

    • University of Maryland, College Park
    • Center for Nanoscale and Advanced Materials, University of Maryland
    • University of Maryland, College Park & NIST

  • Mark Zic

    • University of Maryland, College Park

  • Johnpierre Paglione

    • Physics, University of Maryland
    • University of Maryland, College Park
    • Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials, University of Maryland College Park
    • Center for Nanophysics and Advance Materials, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
    • University of Maryland, College Park & NIST
    • Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park
    • University of Maryland
    • University of Maryland - College Park

  • Nicholas Butch

    • NIST Center for Neutron Research
    • Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology
    • NIST
    • NIST Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology
    • National Institute of Standards and Technology
    • University of Maryland, College Park & NIST