Evidence for even parity unconventional superconductivity in Sr2RuO4

Unambiguous identification of the superconducting order parameter symmetry in Sr2RuO4 has remained elusive for more than a quarter century. While a chiral p-wave ground state analogue to superfluid 3He-A was ruled out only very recently, other proposed triplet-pairing scenarios are still viable. Establishing the condensate magnetic susceptibility reveals a sharp distinction between even-parity (singlet) and odd-parity (triplet) pairing since the superconducting condensate is magnetically polarizable only in the latter case. Here field-dependent 17O Knight shift measurements, being sensitive to the spin polarization, are compared to previously reported specific heat measurements for the purpose of distinguishing the condensate contribution from that due to quasiparticles. We conclude that the shift results can be accounted for entirely by the expected field-induced quasiparticle response. An upper bound for the condensate magnetic response of <10% of the normal state susceptibility is sufficient to exclude all purely odd-parity candidates.

Singular magnetic anisotropy in the nematic phase of FeSe

FeSe is arguably the simplest, yet the most enigmatic, iron-based superconductor. Its nematic but non-magnetic ground state is unprecedented in this class of materials and stands out as a current puzzle. Here, our nuclear magnetic resonance measurements in the nematic state of mechanically detwinned FeSe reveal that both the Knight-shift and the spin–lattice relaxation rate 1/T1 possess an in-plane anisotropy opposite to that of the iron pnictides LaFeAsO and BaFe2As2. Using a microscopic electron model that includes spin–orbit coupling, our calculations show that an opposite quasiparticle weight ratio between the dxz and dyz orbitals leads to an opposite anisotropy of the orbital magnetic susceptibility, which explains our Knight-shift results. We attribute this property to a different nature of nematic order in the two compounds, predominantly bond type in FeSe and onsite ferro-orbital in pnictides. The T1 anisotropy is found to be inconsistent with existing neutron scattering data in FeSe, showing that the spin fluctuation spectrum reveals surprises at low energy, possibly from fluctuations that do not break C4 symmetry. Therefore, our results reveal that important information is hidden in these anisotropies and they place stringent constraints on the low-energy spin correlations as well as on the nature of nematicity in FeSe.

Momentum-resolved superconducting energy gaps of Sr2RuO4 from quasiparticle interference imaging

Sr2RuO4 has long been the focus of intense research interest because of conjectures that it is a correlated topological superconductor. It is the momentum space (k-space) structure of the superconducting energy gap Δi(k) on each band i that encodes its unknown superconducting order parameter. However, because the energy scales are so low, it has never been possible to directly measure the Δi(k) of Sr2RuO4. Here, we implement Bogoliubov quasiparticle interference (BQPI) imaging, a technique capable of high-precision measurement of multiband Δi(k). At T = 90 mK, we visualize a set of Bogoliubov scattering interference wavevectors qj:j=1−5 consistent with eight gap nodes/minima that are all closely aligned to the (±1,±1) crystal lattice directions on both the α and β bands. Taking these observations in combination with other very recent advances in directional thermal conductivity [E. Hassinger et al., Phys. Rev. X 7, 011032 (2017)], temperature-dependent Knight shift [A. Pustogow et al., Nature 574, 72–75 (2019)], time-reversal symmetry conservation [S. Kashiwaya et al., Phys. Rev B, 100, 094530 (2019)], and theory [A. T. Rømer et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 247001 (2019); H. S. Roising, T. Scaffidi, F. Flicker, G. F. Lange, S. H. Simon, Phys. Rev. Res. 1, 033108 (2019); and O. Gingras, R. Nourafkan, A. S. Tremblay, M. Côté, Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 217005 (2019)], the BQPI signature of Sr2RuO4 appears most consistent with Δi(k) having dx2−y2(B1g) symmetry.