Journal Article

Fully gapped d -wave superconductivity in CeCu 2 Si 2

Si, Qimiao, Yuan, Huiqiu, Zhang, Yongjun, Pang, Guiming, Jiang, Wenbing, Zhang, Jinglei, Steglich, Frank, Gegenwart, Philipp, Xie, Wu, Weng, Zongfa, Jeevan, Hirale S., Jiao, Lin, Nica, Emilian M., Lee, Hanoh, Chen, Ye, Smidman, Michael

2018

Overview

Identifying the gap structure of superconductors is vital for understanding the underlying pairing mechanism of the Cooper pairs. The first heavy fermion superconductor to be discovered, CeCu 2 Si 2 , was thought to be a d -wave superconductor with gap nodes, until recent specific heat measurements provided evidence that the gap is fully open across the Fermi surface. We propose a resolution to this puzzle from measurements of the London penetration depth, which give further evidence for fully gapped superconductivity. We analyze the data using a d -wave band-mixing pairing model, which leads to a fully open superconducting gap. Our model accounts well for the penetration depth and specific heat data, while reconciling the nodeless and sign-changing nature of the gap function. The nature of the pairing symmetry of the first heavy fermion superconductor CeCu 2 Si 2 has recently become the subject of controversy. While CeCu 2 Si 2 was generally believed to be a d -wave superconductor, recent low-temperature specific heat measurements showed evidence for fully gapped superconductivity, contrary to the nodal behavior inferred from earlier results. Here, we report London penetration depth measurements, which also reveal fully gapped behavior at very low temperatures. To explain these seemingly conflicting results, we propose a fully gapped d + d band-mixing pairing state for CeCu 2 Si 2 , which yields very good fits to both the superfluid density and specific heat, as well as accounting for a sign change of the superconducting order parameter, as previously concluded from inelastic neutron scattering results.