Enhancement of superconductivity near the ferromagnetic quantum critical point in UCoGe

We report a high-pressure single crystal study of the superconducting ferromagnet UCoGe. Ac-susceptibility and resistivity measurements under pressures up to 2.2 GPa show ferromagnetism is smoothly depressed and vanishes at a critical pressure $p_c = 1.4$ GPa. Near the ferromagnetic critical point superconductivity is enhanced. Upper-critical field measurements under pressure show $B_{c2}(0)$ attains remarkably large values, which provides solid evidence for spin-triplet superconductivity over the whole pressure range. The obtained $p-T$ phase diagram reveals superconductivity is closely connected to a ferromagnetic quantum critical point hidden under the superconducting `dome'.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; accepted for publication in PR

Kondo hybridisation and the origin of metallic states at the (001) surface of SmB6

SmB6, a well-known Kondo insulator, has been proposed to be an ideal topological insulator with states of topological character located in a clean, bulk electronic gap, namely the Kondo hybridisation gap. Seeing as the Kondo gap arises from many body electronic correlations, this would place SmB6 at the head of a new material class: topological Kondo insulators. Here, for the first time, we show that the k-space characteristics of the Kondo hybridisation process is the key to unravelling the origin of the two types of metallic states observed directly by ARPES in the electronic band structure of SmB6(001). One group of these states is essentially of bulk origin, and cuts the Fermi level due to the position of the chemical potential 20 meV above the lowest lying 5d-4f hybridisation zone. The other metallic state is more enigmatic, being weak in intensity, but represents a good candidate for a topological surface state. However, before this claim can be substantiated by an unequivocal measurement of its massless dispersion relation, our data raises the bar in terms of the ARPES resolution required, as we show there to be a strong renormalisation of the hybridisation gaps by a factor 2-3 compared to theory, following from the knowledge of the true position of the chemical potential and a careful comparison with the predictions from recent LDA+Gutzwiler calculations. All in all, these key pieces of evidence act as triangulation markers, providing a detailed description of the electronic landscape in SmB6, pointing the way for future, ultrahigh resolution ARPES experiments to achieve a direct measurement of the Dirac cones in the first topological Kondo insulator.Comment: 9 pages, 4 Figures and supplementary material (including Movies and CORPES13 "best prize" poster

Superconductivity in heavy-fermion U(Pt,Pd)3 and its interplay with magnetism

The effect of Pd doping on the superconducting phase diagram of the unconventional superconductor UPt3 has been measured by (magneto)resistance, specific heat, thermal expansion and magnetostriction. Experiments on single- and polycrystalline U(Pt1-xPdx)3 for x<= 0.006 show that the superconducting transition temperatures of the A phase, Tc+, and of the B phase, Tc-, both decrease, while the splitting DTc increases at a rate of 0.30(2)K/at.%Pd. We find that DTc(x) correlates with an increase of the weak magnetic moment m(x) upon Pd doping. This provides further evidence for Ginzburg-Landau scenarios with magnetism as the symmetry breaking field, i.e. the 2D E representation and the 1D odd parity model. Only for small splittings DTc is proportional to m^2(Tc+) (DTc<= 0.05 K) as predicted. The results at larger splittings call for Ginzburg-Landau expansions beyond 4th order. The tetracritical point in the B-T plane persists till at least x= 0.002 for B perpendicular to c, while it is rapidly suppressed for B||c. Upon alloying the A and B phases gain stability at the expense of the C phase.Comment: 25 pages text (PS), 8 pages with 14 figures (PS), submitted to Phys.Rev.

Chronology Protection in Galileon Models and Massive Gravity

Galileon models are a class of effective field theories that have recently received much attention. They arise in the decoupling limit of theories of massive gravity, and in some cases they have been treated in their own right as scalar field theories with a specific nonlinearly realized global symmetry (Galilean transformation). It is well known that in the presence of a source, these Galileon theories admit superluminal propagating solutions, implying that as quantum field theories they must admit a different notion of causality than standard local Lorentz invariant theories. We show that in these theories it is easy to construct closed timelike curves (CTCs) within the {\it naive} regime of validity of the effective field theory. However, on closer inspection we see that the CTCs could never arise since the Galileon inevitably becomes infinitely strongly coupled at the onset of the formation of a CTC. This implies an infinite amount of backreaction, first on the background for the Galileon field, signaling the break down of the effective field theory, and subsequently on the spacetime geometry, forbidding the formation of the CTC. Furthermore the background solution required to create CTCs becomes unstable with an arbitrarily fast decay time. Thus Galileon theories satisfy a direct analogue of Hawking's chronology protection conjecture.Comment: 34 pages, no figure

Electronic structure of the candidate 2D Dirac semimetal SrMnSb2: a combined experimental and theoretical study

SrMnSb$_2$ is suggested to be a magnetic topological semimetal. It contains square, 2D Sb planes with non-symmorphic crystal symmetries that could protect band crossings, offering the possibility of a quasi-2D, robust Dirac semi-metal in the form of a stable, bulk (3D) crystal. Here, we report a combined and comprehensive experimental and theoretical investigation of the electronic structure of SrMnSb$_2$, including the first ARPES data on this compound. SrMnSb$_2$ possesses a small Fermi surface originating from highly 2D, sharp and linearly dispersing bands (the Y-states) around the (0,$\pi$/a)-point in $k$-space. The ARPES Fermi surface agrees perfectly with that from bulk-sensitive Shubnikov de Haas data from the same crystals, proving the Y$-$states to be responsible for electrical conductivity in SrMnSb$_2$. DFT and tight binding (TB) methods are used to model the electronic states, and both show good agreement with the ARPES data. Despite the great promise of the latter, both theory approaches show the Y-states to be gapped above E$_F$, suggesting trivial topology. Subsequent analysis within both theory approaches shows the Berry phase to be zero, indicating the non-topological character of the transport in SrMnSb$_2$, a conclusion backed up by the analysis of the quantum oscillation data from our crystals.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figures, revised submission to SciPost after including changes requested by referees. All referee reports are open and can be viewed here: https://scipost.org/submissions/1711.07165v2

Inflection point in the magnetic field dependence of the ordered moment of URu2Si2 observed by neutron scattering in fields up to 17 T

We have measured the magnetic field dependence of the ordered antiferromagnetic moment and the magnetic excitations in the heavy-fermion superconductor URu2Si2 for fields up to 17 Tesla applied along the tetragonal c axis, using neutron scattering. The decrease of the magnetic intensity of the tiny moment with increasing field does not follow a simple power law, but shows a clear inflection point, indicating that the moment disappears first at the metamagnetic transition at ~40 T. This suggests that the moment m is connected to a hidden order parameter Phi which belongs to the same irreducible representation breaking time-reversal symmetry. The magnetic excitation gap at the antiferromagnetic zone center Q=(1,0,0) increases continuously with increasing field, while that at Q=(1.4,0,0) is nearly constant. This field dependence is opposite to that of the gap extracted from specific-heat data.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, submitted to PR

Suppression of Superconductivity in Single Crystals of UPt_3 by Pd Substitution

The suppression of superconductivity by substitution effects has been measured in high quality single crystals of U(Pt_{1-x} Pd_x)_3 with 0 <= x <= 0.002. While the superconducting transition temperature T_c varies linearly with residual resistivity r_0, consistent with pair-breaking by impurity potential scattering, the rate of suppression of T_c with r_0 is much larger for Pd substitution than for other impurity substitutions or by increased defect density. This effect is correlated with an increase in the inelastic scattering coefficient, and may be related to Pd-induced changes in the magnetic fluctuation spectrum.Comment: 12 page in manuscript, plus 4 figure

Analog gravity from field theory normal modes?

We demonstrate that the emergence of a curved spacetime ``effective Lorentzian geometry'' is a common and generic result of linearizing a field theory around some non-trivial background. This investigation is motivated by considering the large number of ``analog models'' of general relativity that have recently been developed based on condensed matter physics, and asking whether there is something more fundamental going on. Indeed, linearization of a classical field theory (a field theoretic ``normal mode analysis'') results in fluctuations whose propagation is governed by a Lorentzian-signature curved spacetime ``effective metric''. For a single scalar field, this procedure results in a unique effective metric, which is quite sufficient for simulating kinematic aspects of general relativity (up to and including Hawking radiation). Quantizing the linearized fluctuations, the one-loop effective action contains a term proportional to the Einstein--Hilbert action, suggesting that while classical physics is responsible for generating an ``effective geometry'', quantum physics can be argued to induce an ``effective dynamics''. The situation is strongly reminiscent of Sakharov's ``induced gravity'' scenario, and suggests that Einstein gravity is an emergent low-energy long-distance phenomenon that is insensitive to the details of the high-energy short-distance physics. (We mean this in the same sense that hydrodynamics is a long-distance emergent phenomenon, many of whose predictions are insensitive to the short-distance cutoff implicit in molecular dynamics.)Comment: Revtex 4 (beta 5); 12 pages in single-column forma