Robust nodal behavior in the thermal conductivity of superconducting UTe$_2$
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2024
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| _version_ | 1866913248497893376 |
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| author | Hayes, Ian M. Metz, Tristin E. Frank, Corey E. Saha, Shanta R. Butch, Nicholas P. Mishra, Vivek Hirschfeld, Peter J. Paglione, Johnpierre |
| author_facet | Hayes, Ian M. Metz, Tristin E. Frank, Corey E. Saha, Shanta R. Butch, Nicholas P. Mishra, Vivek Hirschfeld, Peter J. Paglione, Johnpierre |
| contents | The superconducting state of the heavy-fermion metal UTe$_2$ has attracted considerable interest because of evidence for spin-triplet Cooper pairing and non-trivial topology. Progress on these questions requires identifying the presence or absence of nodes in the superconducting gap function and their dimension. In this article we report a comprehensive study of the influence of disorder on the thermal transport in the superconducting state of UTe$_2$. Through detailed measurements of the magnetic field dependence of the thermal conductivity in the zero-temperature limit, we obtain clear evidence for the presence of point nodes in the superconducting gap for all samples with transition temperatures ranging from 1.6~K to 2.1~K obtained by different synthesis methods, including a refined self-flux method. This robustness implies the presence of symmetry-imposed nodes throughout the range studied, further confirmed via disorder-dependent calculations of the thermal transport in a model with a single pair of nodes. In addition to capturing the temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity up to $T_c$, this model allows us to limit the possible locations of the nodes, suggesting a B$_{1u}$ or B$_{2u}$ symmetry for the superconducting order parameter. Additionally, comparing the new, ultra-high conductivity samples to older samples reveals a crossover between a low-field and a high field regime at a single value of the magnetic field in all samples. In the high field regime, the thermal conductivity at different disorder levels differ from each other by a simple offset, suggesting that some simple principle determines the physics of the mixed state, a fact which may illuminate trends observed in other clean nodal superconductors. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_19353 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Robust nodal behavior in the thermal conductivity of superconducting UTe$_2$ Hayes, Ian M. Metz, Tristin E. Frank, Corey E. Saha, Shanta R. Butch, Nicholas P. Mishra, Vivek Hirschfeld, Peter J. Paglione, Johnpierre Superconductivity Strongly Correlated Electrons The superconducting state of the heavy-fermion metal UTe$_2$ has attracted considerable interest because of evidence for spin-triplet Cooper pairing and non-trivial topology. Progress on these questions requires identifying the presence or absence of nodes in the superconducting gap function and their dimension. In this article we report a comprehensive study of the influence of disorder on the thermal transport in the superconducting state of UTe$_2$. Through detailed measurements of the magnetic field dependence of the thermal conductivity in the zero-temperature limit, we obtain clear evidence for the presence of point nodes in the superconducting gap for all samples with transition temperatures ranging from 1.6~K to 2.1~K obtained by different synthesis methods, including a refined self-flux method. This robustness implies the presence of symmetry-imposed nodes throughout the range studied, further confirmed via disorder-dependent calculations of the thermal transport in a model with a single pair of nodes. In addition to capturing the temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity up to $T_c$, this model allows us to limit the possible locations of the nodes, suggesting a B$_{1u}$ or B$_{2u}$ symmetry for the superconducting order parameter. Additionally, comparing the new, ultra-high conductivity samples to older samples reveals a crossover between a low-field and a high field regime at a single value of the magnetic field in all samples. In the high field regime, the thermal conductivity at different disorder levels differ from each other by a simple offset, suggesting that some simple principle determines the physics of the mixed state, a fact which may illuminate trends observed in other clean nodal superconductors. |
| title | Robust nodal behavior in the thermal conductivity of superconducting UTe$_2$ |
| topic | Superconductivity Strongly Correlated Electrons |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.19353 |