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Free keywords:
Quasiparticle interference, Strontium ruthenate, Superconducting energy gaps, article, crystal, thermal conductivity
Abstract:
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. © 2020 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
