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Chiral superconductivity in UTe(2) probed by anisotropic low-energy excitations

Chiral spin-triplet superconductivity is a topologically nontrivial pairing state with broken time-reversal symmetry, which can host Majorana quasiparticles. The heavy-fermion superconductor UTe(2) exhibits peculiar properties of spin-triplet pairing, and the possible chiral state has been actively...

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Autores principales: Ishihara, Kota, Roppongi, Masaki, Kobayashi, Masayuki, Imamura, Kumpei, Mizukami, Yuta, Sakai, Hironori, Opletal, Petr, Tokiwa, Yoshifumi, Haga, Yoshinori, Hashimoto, Kenichiro, Shibauchi, Takasada
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10205722/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37221184
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-38688-y
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author Ishihara, Kota
Roppongi, Masaki
Kobayashi, Masayuki
Imamura, Kumpei
Mizukami, Yuta
Sakai, Hironori
Opletal, Petr
Tokiwa, Yoshifumi
Haga, Yoshinori
Hashimoto, Kenichiro
Shibauchi, Takasada
author_facet Ishihara, Kota
Roppongi, Masaki
Kobayashi, Masayuki
Imamura, Kumpei
Mizukami, Yuta
Sakai, Hironori
Opletal, Petr
Tokiwa, Yoshifumi
Haga, Yoshinori
Hashimoto, Kenichiro
Shibauchi, Takasada
author_sort Ishihara, Kota
collection PubMed
description Chiral spin-triplet superconductivity is a topologically nontrivial pairing state with broken time-reversal symmetry, which can host Majorana quasiparticles. The heavy-fermion superconductor UTe(2) exhibits peculiar properties of spin-triplet pairing, and the possible chiral state has been actively discussed. However, the symmetry and nodal structure of its order parameter in the bulk, which determine the Majorana surface states, remains controversial. Here we focus on the number and positions of superconducting gap nodes in the ground state of UTe(2). Our magnetic penetration depth measurements for three field orientations in three crystals all show the power-law temperature dependence with exponents close to 2, which excludes single-component spin-triplet states. The anisotropy of low-energy quasiparticle excitations indicates multiple point nodes near the k(y)- and k(z)-axes in momentum space. These results can be consistently explained by a chiral B(3u) + iA(u) non-unitary state, providing fundamentals of the topological properties in UTe(2).
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spelling pubmed-102057222023-05-25 Chiral superconductivity in UTe(2) probed by anisotropic low-energy excitations Ishihara, Kota Roppongi, Masaki Kobayashi, Masayuki Imamura, Kumpei Mizukami, Yuta Sakai, Hironori Opletal, Petr Tokiwa, Yoshifumi Haga, Yoshinori Hashimoto, Kenichiro Shibauchi, Takasada Nat Commun Article Chiral spin-triplet superconductivity is a topologically nontrivial pairing state with broken time-reversal symmetry, which can host Majorana quasiparticles. The heavy-fermion superconductor UTe(2) exhibits peculiar properties of spin-triplet pairing, and the possible chiral state has been actively discussed. However, the symmetry and nodal structure of its order parameter in the bulk, which determine the Majorana surface states, remains controversial. Here we focus on the number and positions of superconducting gap nodes in the ground state of UTe(2). Our magnetic penetration depth measurements for three field orientations in three crystals all show the power-law temperature dependence with exponents close to 2, which excludes single-component spin-triplet states. The anisotropy of low-energy quasiparticle excitations indicates multiple point nodes near the k(y)- and k(z)-axes in momentum space. These results can be consistently explained by a chiral B(3u) + iA(u) non-unitary state, providing fundamentals of the topological properties in UTe(2). Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-05-23 /pmc/articles/PMC10205722/ /pubmed/37221184 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-38688-y Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Ishihara, Kota
Roppongi, Masaki
Kobayashi, Masayuki
Imamura, Kumpei
Mizukami, Yuta
Sakai, Hironori
Opletal, Petr
Tokiwa, Yoshifumi
Haga, Yoshinori
Hashimoto, Kenichiro
Shibauchi, Takasada
Chiral superconductivity in UTe(2) probed by anisotropic low-energy excitations
title Chiral superconductivity in UTe(2) probed by anisotropic low-energy excitations
title_full Chiral superconductivity in UTe(2) probed by anisotropic low-energy excitations
title_fullStr Chiral superconductivity in UTe(2) probed by anisotropic low-energy excitations
title_full_unstemmed Chiral superconductivity in UTe(2) probed by anisotropic low-energy excitations
title_short Chiral superconductivity in UTe(2) probed by anisotropic low-energy excitations
title_sort chiral superconductivity in ute(2) probed by anisotropic low-energy excitations
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10205722/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37221184
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-38688-y
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