Emergence of superconductivity in heavy-electron materials
Contributed by David Pines, November 19, 2014 (sent for review November 3, 2014)
Significance
Although the pairing glue for the unconventional superconductivity found in heavy-electron materials has been identified as quantum critical spin fluctuations associated with their proximity to antiferromagnetic order, until now we have lacked a simple expression for their superconducting transition temperature, Tc, that explains why Tc changes with pressure, or varies from one material to another. The experiment-based expression proposed here parameterizes the effective frequency-dependent quasiparticle interactions in terms of their unusual normal-state properties; it provides a quantitative explanation of the measured pressure-induced variation in Tc in the “hydrogen atoms” of unconventional superconductivity, CeCoIn5 and CeRhIn5, predicts a similar pressure variation for other heavy-electron quantum critical superconductors, and quantifies their variations in Tc with a single parameter.
Abstract
Although the pairing glue for the attractive quasiparticle interaction responsible for unconventional superconductivity in heavy-electron materials has been identified as the spin fluctuations that arise from their proximity to a magnetic quantum critical point, there has been no model to describe their superconducting transition at temperature Tc that is comparable to that found by Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer (BCS) for conventional superconductors, where phonons provide the pairing glue. Here we propose such a model: a phenomenological BCS-like expression for Tc in heavy-electron materials that is based on a simple model for the effective range and strength of the spin-fluctuation-induced quasiparticle interaction and reflects the unusual properties of the heavy-electron normal state from which superconductivity emerges. We show that it provides a quantitative understanding of the pressure-induced variation of Tc in the “hydrogen atoms” of unconventional superconductivity, CeCoIn5 and CeRhIn5, predicts scaling behavior and a dome-like structure for Tc in all heavy-electron quantum critical superconductors, provides unexpected connections between members of this family, and quantifies their variations in Tc with a single parameter.
Acknowledgments
We thank G. Lonzarich for his critical reading and helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript, Z. Fisk for his critical reading and helpful remarks about the framing of this manuscript, and the Aspen Center for Physics (National Science Foundation Grant PHYS-1066293) and the Santa Fe Institute for their hospitality during its writing. Y.-f.Y. thanks the Simons Foundation for its support and this work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China Grant11174339 and Strategic Priority Research Program (B) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Grant XDB07020200.
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Cover image: Pictured is a false-color scanning electron microscope image of framboidal pyrite crystals (red) embedded in an organic-rich Cretaceous shale. The image is part of a nearly 70 gigapixel image mosaic covering around 1 cm2 that was acquired at a resolution of 40 nm per pixel. Framboidal, or raspberry-like, pyrite is thought to reflect the activity of sulfate-reducing microbes. Boswell A. Wing and Itay Halevy modeled how respiration by sulfate-reducing bacteria and archaea discriminates, or fractionates, among sulfur isotopes. The results suggest that fractionation may be influenced by each step of the microbial respiration pathway and by the levels of intracellular respiratory metabolites, leading to strain-specific sulfur isotope phenotypes. See the Feature Article by Wing and Halevy on pages 18116–18125. Image courtesy of Fibics Incorporated.
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Published online: December 8, 2014
Published in issue: December 23, 2014
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Acknowledgments
We thank G. Lonzarich for his critical reading and helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript, Z. Fisk for his critical reading and helpful remarks about the framing of this manuscript, and the Aspen Center for Physics (National Science Foundation Grant PHYS-1066293) and the Santa Fe Institute for their hospitality during its writing. Y.-f.Y. thanks the Simons Foundation for its support and this work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China Grant11174339 and Strategic Priority Research Program (B) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Grant XDB07020200.
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The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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