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Condensed Matter > Superconductivity

Title: Theoretical studies on off-axis phase diagrams and Knight shifts in UTe$_2$ -- Tetra-critical point, d-vector rotation, and multiple phases

Abstract: Inspired by recent remarkable sets of experiments on UTe$_2$: discoveries of the fourth horizontal internal transition line running toward a tetra-critical point (TCP) at $H$=15T, the off-axis high field phases, and abnormally large Knight shift (KS) drop below $T_{\rm c}$ for $H$$\parallel$$a$-magnetic easy axis, we advance further our theoretical work on the field ($H$)-temperature ($T$) phase diagram for $H$$\parallel$$b$-magnetic hard axis which contains a positive sloped $H_{\rm c2}$ departing from TCP. A nonunitary spin-triplet pairing with three components explains these experimental facts simultaneously and consistently by assuming that the underlying normal electron system with a narrow bandwidth characteristic to the Kondo temperature $\sim$60K unsurprisingly breaks the particle-hole symmetry. This causes a special invariant term in Ginzburg-Landau (GL) free energy functional which couples directly with the 5f magnetic system, giving rise to the $T_{\rm c}$ splitting and ultimately to the positive sloped $H_{\rm c2}$ and the horizontal internal transition line connected to TCP. The large KS drop can be understood in terms of this GL invariance whose coefficient is negative and leads to a diamagnetic response where the Cooper pair spin is antiparallel to the applied field direction. The present scenario also accounts for the observed d-vector rotation phenomena and off-axis phase diagrams with extremely high $H_{\rm c2}$$\gtrsim$70T found at angles in between the $b$ and $c$-axes and between the $bc$ plane and $a$-axis, making UTe$_2$ a fertile playground for a topological superconductor.
Comments: 23 pages, 21 figures
Subjects: Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con); Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
Cite as: arXiv:2405.01831 [cond-mat.supr-con]
  (or arXiv:2405.01831v1 [cond-mat.supr-con] for this version)

Submission history

From: Kazushige Machida [view email]
[v1] Fri, 3 May 2024 03:34:21 GMT (7029kb,D)

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