Abstract
In all known fermionic superfluids, Cooper pairs are composed of spin-1/2 quasi-particles that pair to form either spin-singlet or spin-triplet bound States. The "spin" of a Bloch electron, however, is fixed by the symmetries of the crystal and the atomic orbitals from which it is derived and, in some cases, can behave as if it were a spin-3/2 particle. The superconducting state of such a system allows pairing beyond spin-triplet, with higher spin quasi-particles combining to form quintet or septet pairs. We report evidence of unconventional superconductivity emerging from a spin-3/2 quasi-particle electronic structure in the half-Heusler semimetal YPtBi, a low-carrier density noncentrosymmetric cubic material with a high symmetry that preserves the p-like j = 3/2 manifold in the Bi-based Γ8 band in the presence of strong spin-orbit coupling. With a striking linear temperature dependence of the London penetration depth, the existence of line nodes in the superconducting order parameter Δ is directly explained by a mixed-parity Cooper pairing model with high total angular momentum, consistent with a high-spin fermionic superfluid state. We propose a k·p model of the j = 3/2 fermions to explain how a dominant J = 3 septet pairing state is the simplest solution that naturally produces nodes in the mixed even-odd parity gap. Together with the underlying topologically nontrivial band structure, the unconventional pairing in this system represents a truly novel form of superfluidity that has strong potential for leading the development of a new series of topological superconductors.
Recommended Citation
H. Kim and K. Wang and Y. Nakajima and R. Hu and S. Ziemak and P. Syers and L. Wang and H. Hodovanets and J. D. Denlinger and For full list of authors, see publisher's website., "Beyond Triplet: Unconventional Superconductivity in a Spin-3/2 Topological Semimetal," Science Advances, vol. 4, no. 4, article no. eaao4513, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Apr 2018.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aao4513
Department(s)
Physics
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
2375-2548
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2018 The Authors, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Publication Date
06 Apr 2018
PubMed ID
29740606
