Microscopic evidence for chiral superconductivity in a heavy fermion superconductor UTe<sub>2</sub>
ORAL
Abstract
Spin-triplet superconductivity is a condensate of electron pairs with spin-1 and an odd parity pair wavefunction. A particularly interesting manifestation of triplet pairing is a chiral p-wave state which is topologically non-trivial and a natural platform for realizing Majorana edge modes. Triplet pairing is however rare in solid state systems and so far, no unambiguous identification has been made in any bulk compound. Since pairing is most naturally mediated by ferromagnetic spin fluctuations, uranium based heavy fermion systems containing f-electron elements that can harbor both strong correlations and magnetism are considered ideal candidate spin-triplet superconductors. In this talk I will present scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) studies of the newly discovered heavy fermion superconductor, UTe2 with a TSC of 1.6 K. We find signatures of coexisting Kondo effect and superconductivity which show competing spatial modulations within one unit-cell. Most strikingly, STM spectroscopy at step edges show signatures of chiral edge states, indicating UTe2 is a 3D chiral superconductor.
*We gratefully acknowledge support from U.S. Department of Energy under Award Number DE-SC0014335.
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Presenters
Lin Jiao
Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department of Physics and Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Authors
Lin Jiao
Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department of Physics and Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Sean Howard
Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department of Physics and Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Sheng Ran
NIST Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology
University of Maryland, College Park
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Physics Department, University of Maryland
University of Maryland
University of Maryland, College Park & NIST
Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park
NIST Center for Neutron Research
Zhenyu Wang
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
UIUC
Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department of Physics and Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Jorge Olivares Rodriguez
Department of Physics and Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Manfred W Sigrist
Theoretical Physics, ETH-Zurich
Institute for Theoretical Physics, ETH Zurich
Ziqiang Wang
Boston College
Department of Physics, Boston College
Physics, Boston College
Nicholas Butch
NIST Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Center of Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology
NIST Center for Neutron Research
NIST center for neutron research
NIST
NIST Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology,
University of Maryland, College Park & NIST
National Institute of Standards and Technology Center for Neutron Research
Vidya Madhavan
Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department of Physics and Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
