Competing pairing interactions responsible for the large upper critical field in a stoichiometric iron-based superconductor CaKFe4As4

Matthew Bristow, William Knafo, Pascal Reiss, William Meier, Paul C. Canfield, Stephen J. Blundell, and Amalia I. Coldea
Phys. Rev. B 101, 134502 – Published 7 April 2020

Abstract

The upper critical field of multiband superconductors is an important quantity that can reveal details about the nature of the superconducting pairing. Here we experimentally map out the complete upper-critical-field phase diagram of a stoichiometric superconductor, CaKFe4As4, up to 90T for different orientations of the magnetic field and at temperatures down to 4.2K. The upper critical fields are extremely large, reaching values close to 3Tc at the lowest temperature, and the anisotropy decreases dramatically with temperature, leading to essentially isotropic superconductivity at 4.2K. We find that the temperature dependence of the upper critical field can be well described by a two-band model in the clean limit with band-coupling parameters favoring intraband over interband interactions. The large Pauli paramagnetic effects together with the presence of the shallow bands is consistent with the stabilization of an FFLO state at low temperatures in this clean superconductor.

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  • Received 14 November 2019
  • Accepted 2 March 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.101.134502

©2020 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Matthew Bristow1,*, William Knafo2, Pascal Reiss1, William Meier3,4, Paul C. Canfield3,4, Stephen J. Blundell1, and Amalia I. Coldea1,†

  • 1Clarendon Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU, United Kingdom
  • 2Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Intenses (LNCMI), CNRS-UJF-UPS-INSA, Toulouse, France
  • 3Ames Laboratory, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA
  • 4Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA

  • *Corresponding author: matthew.bristow@physics.ox.ac.uk
  • Corresponding author: amalia.coldea@physics.ox.ac.uk

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Issue

Vol. 101, Iss. 13 — 1 April 2020

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