Nodeless superconductivity in the type-II Dirac semimetal PdTe2: London penetration depth and pairing-symmetry analysis

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2018-07-01
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Teknowijoyo, Serafim
Jo, Na Hyun
Scheurer, Mathias
Tanatar, Makariy
Cho, Kyuil
Bud’ko, Sergey
Orth, Peter
Canfield, Paul
Prozorov, Ruslan
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Physics and Astronomy
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Ames National LaboratoryPhysics and Astronomy
Abstract

Superconducting gap structure was probed in type-II Dirac semimetal PdTe2 by measuring the London penetration depth using the tunnel diode resonator technique. At low temperatures, the data for two samples are well described by a weak-coupling exponential fit yielding λ(T=0)=230 nm as the only fit parameter at a fixed Δ(0)/Tc≈1.76, and the calculated superfluid density is consistent with a fully gapped superconducting state characterized by a single gap scale. Electrical resistivity measurements for in-plane and inter-plane current directions find very low and nearly temperature-independent normal-state anisotropy. The temperature dependence of resistivity is typical for conventional phonon scattering in metals. We compare these experimental results with expectations from a detailed theoretical symmetry analysis and reduce the number of possible superconducting pairing states in PdTe2 to only three nodeless candidates: a regular, topologically trivial s-wave pairing, and two distinct odd-parity triplet states that both can be topologically nontrivial depending on the microscopic interactions driving the superconducting instability.

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This article is published as Teknowijoyo, Serafim, Na Hyun Jo, Mathias S. Scheurer, Makariy A. Tanatar, Kyuil Cho, Sergey L. Bud'ko, Peter P. Orth, Paul C. Canfield, and Ruslan Prozorov. "Nodeless superconductivity in the type-II Dirac semimetal PdTe 2: London penetration depth and pairing-symmetry analysis." Physical Review B 98, no. 2 (2018): 024508. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.98.024508. Posted with permission.

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Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 UTC 2018
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