Abstract
The interplay of magnetic and charge fluctuations can lead to quantum phases with exceptional electronic properties. A case in point is magnetically-driven superconductivity1,2, where magnetic correlations fundamentally affect the underlying symmetry and generate new physical properties. The superconducting wavefunction in most known magnetic superconductors does not break translational symmetry. However, it has been predicted that modulated triplet p-wave superconductivity occurs in singlet d-wave superconductors with spin-density-wave (SDW) order3,4. Here we report evidence for the presence of a spatially inhomogeneous p-wave Cooper pair-density wave in CeCoIn5. We show that the SDW domains can be switched completely by a tiny change of the magnetic field direction, which is naturally explained by the presence of triplet superconductivity. Further, the Q-phase emerges in a common magneto-superconducting quantum critical point. The Q-phase of CeCoIn5 thus represents an example where spatially modulated superconductivity is associated with SDW order.
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Acknowledgements
This work is based on neutron scattering experiments performed at the Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, France and the Swiss Spallation Neutron Source SINQ, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland. We thank P. Fouilloux and M. Zolliker for technical assistance. Discussions with M. Sigrist as well as C. Batista, P. Coleman, K. Machida, K. Kumagai and J. S. White are acknowledged. This work was supported by the Swiss NSF (Contract No. 200021-122054, 200020-140345 and MaNEP). A.D.B. received support from NSERC, FQRNT and the Canada Research Chair Foundation. Work at LANL was performed under the auspices of the US DOE, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering.
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S.G. and M.K. conceived and led the project. S.G., M.B., J.L.G., E.R., N.E., C.N. and M.K. carried out the experiments. M.B. incorporated the piezoelectric sample rotator into the set-up. E.D.B and J.D.T. grew and characterized the CeCoIn5 single-crystal. S.G. analysed the data. S.G., J.L.G. and M.K. wrote the manuscript with input from all co-authors.
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Gerber, S., Bartkowiak, M., Gavilano, J. et al. Switching of magnetic domains reveals spatially inhomogeneous superconductivity. Nature Phys 10, 126–129 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2833
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2833
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