Scanning Tunneling Microscopy studies on CeCoIn$_5$ and CeIrIn$_5$

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Abstract

High--quality single crystals of the heavy fermion superconductors CeCoIn$_5$ and CeIrIn$_5$ have been studied by means of low--temperature Scanning Tunneling Microscopy. Methods were established to facilitate \textit{in-situ} sample cleaving. Spectroscopy in CeCoIn$_5$ reveals a gap which persists to above $T_c$, possibly evidencing a precursor state to SC. Atomically resolved topographs show a rearrangement of the atoms at the crystal surface. This modification at the surface might influence the surface properties as detected by tunneling spectroscopy.

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Scanning tunneling spectroscopy of high-temperature superconductors

Christophe Berthod, Christoph Renner, Ivan Maggio-Aprile … (2006)

Tunneling spectroscopy played a central role in the experimental verification of the microscopic theory of superconductivity in the classical superconductors. Initial attempts to apply the same approach to high-temperature superconductors were hampered by various problems related to the complexity of these materials. The use of scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS) on these compounds allowed to overcome the main difficulties. This success motivated a rapidly growing scientific community to apply this technique to high-temperature superconductors. This paper reviews the experimental highlights obtained over the last decade. We first recall the crucial efforts to gain control over the technique and to obtain reproducible results. We then discuss how the STM/STS technique has contributed to the study of some of the most unusual and remarkable properties of high-temperature superconductors: the unusual large gap values and the absence of scaling with the critical temperature; the pseudogap and its relation to superconductivity; the unprecedented small size of the vortex cores and its influence on vortex matter; the unexpected electronic properties of the vortex cores; the combination of atomic resolution and spectroscopy leading to the observation of periodic local density of states modulations in the superconducting and pseudogap states, and in the vortex cores.

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A New Heavy-Fermion Superconductor CeIrIn5: Relative of the Cuprates?

C. Petrovic, R Movshovich, P. Pagliuso … (2000)

CeIrIn5 is a member of a new family of heavy-fermion compounds and has a Sommerfeld specific heat coefficient of 720 mJ/mol-K2. It exhibits a bulk, thermodynamic transition to a superconducting state at Tc=0.40 K, below which the specific heat decreases as T2 to a small residual T-linear value. Surprisingly, the electrical resistivity drops below instrumental resolution at a much higher temperature T0=1.2 K. These behaviors are highly reproducible and field-dependent studies indicate that T0 and Tc arise from the same underlying electronic structure. The layered crystal structure of CeIrIn5 suggests a possible analogy to the cuprates in which spin/charge pair correlations develop well above Tc.

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Superconductivity and Quantum Criticality in CeCoIn_5

J. D. Thompson, V. Sidorov, M. Nicklas … (2002)

Electrical resistivity measurements on a single crystal of the heavy-fermion superconductor CeCoIn_5 at pressures to 4.2 GPa reveal a strong crossover in transport properties near P^* \approx 1.6 GPa, where T_c is a maximum. The temperature-pressure phase diagram constructed from these data provides a natural connection to cuprate physics, including the possible existence of a pseudogap.