Interplay of hidden orbital order and superconductivity in CeCoIn5

Weijiong Chen; Clara Neerup Breiø; Freek Massee; Milan P Allan; Cedomir Petrovic; J C Séamus Davis; Peter J Hirschfeld; Brian M Andersen; Andreas Kreisel

doi:10.1038/s41467-023-38760-7

Interplay of hidden orbital order and superconductivity in CeCoIn₅

Nat Commun. 2023 May 24;14(1):2984. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-38760-7.

Authors

Weijiong Chen^#¹, Clara Neerup Breiø^#², Freek Massee^#³, Milan P Allan⁴, Cedomir Petrovic⁵, J C Séamus Davis^{6

7

8

9}, Peter J Hirschfeld¹⁰, Brian M Andersen¹¹, Andreas Kreisel^{2

12}

Affiliations

¹ Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3PU, UK.
² Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, 2100, Copenhagen, Denmark.
³ Laboratoire de Physique des Solides (CNRS UMR 8502), Bâtiment 510, Université Paris-Sud/Université Paris-Saclay, 91405, Orsay, France.
⁴ Leiden Institute of Physics, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9504, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands.
⁵ CMPMS Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, 11973, USA.
⁶ Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3PU, UK. [email protected].
⁷ LASSP, Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14850, USA. [email protected].
⁸ Department of Physics, University College Cork, Cork, T12 R5C, Ireland. [email protected].
⁹ Max-Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, 01187, Dresden, Germany. [email protected].
¹⁰ Department of Physics, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA.
¹¹ Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, 2100, Copenhagen, Denmark. [email protected].
¹² Inst. für Theoretische Physik, Universität Leipzig, Brüderstr. 16, Leipzig, 04103, Germany.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Visualizing atomic-orbital degrees of freedom is a frontier challenge in scanned microscopy. Some types of orbital order are virtually imperceptible to normal scattering techniques because they do not reduce the overall crystal lattice symmetry. A good example is d_xz/d_yz (π,π) orbital order in tetragonal lattices. For enhanced detectability, here we consider the quasiparticle scattering interference (QPI) signature of such (π,π) orbital order in both normal and superconducting phases. The theory reveals that sublattice-specific QPI signatures generated by the orbital order should emerge strongly in the superconducting phase. Sublattice-resolved QPI visualization in superconducting CeCoIn₅ then reveals two orthogonal QPI patterns at lattice-substitutional impurity atoms. We analyze the energy dependence of these two orthogonal QPI patterns and find the intensity peaked near E = 0, as predicted when such (π,π) orbital order is intertwined with d-wave superconductivity. Sublattice-resolved superconductive QPI techniques thus represent a new approach for study of hidden orbital order.

Abstract

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