1. Strong superconducting pairing strength and pseudogap features in a putative multiphase heavy-fermion superconductor CeRh2As2 by soft point-contact spectroscopy
- Author
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Dong, Qingxin, Shi, Tong, Yang, Pengtao, Liu, Xinyang, Shi, Xiaofan, Wang, Lei, Xiang, Junsen, Ma, Hanming, Tian, Zhaoming, Sun, Jianping, Uwatoko, Yoshiya, Chen, Genfu, Wang, Xinbo, Shen, Jie, Wu, Rui, Lu, Xin, Sun, Peijie, Chajewski, Grzegorz, Kaczorowski, Dariusz, Wang, Bosen, and Cheng, Jinguang
- Subjects
Condensed Matter - Superconductivity ,Condensed Matter - Strongly Correlated Electrons - Abstract
CeRh2As2 is a newly discovered candidate of multiphase heavy-fermion superconductor (Tc=0.3 K) with intriguing physical properties. Here, we employ soft point-contact spectroscopy to investigate its energy gap behaviors in both the normal and superconducting states. The differential conductance below Tc reveals an estimated superconducting energy gap of 2{\Delta}SC=0.24 meV and thus an extremely strong superconducting pairing strength 2{\Delta}SC/kBTc=8.8, which is comparable to those of cuprates and iron-based high-Tc superconductors as well as infinite-layer nickelates. Above Tc, a well-defined pseudogap feature is manifested as a V-shaped dip in the differential conductance spanning an energy scale of 2{\Delta}g=0.95-3.0 meV. The pseudogap feature persists to the highest characteristic temperature of Tg=8-9 K and is gradually suppressed by magnetic field of Bg=9.0T regardless of its direction relative to the crystallographic axes. The observation of pseudogap features prior to the superconducting phase transition enriches the phase diagram of CeRh2As2 and provides a novel platform to study the interplay of unconventional superconductivity and pseudogap phenomena., Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures
- Published
- 2025