No Arabic abstract
A recent report that sulfur hydride under pressure is an electron-phonon superconductor with a Tc of 190 K has been met with much excitement although it is yet to be confirmed. Based on several electron-phonon spectral density functions already available from density functional theory, we find that the electron-phonon spectrum is near optimum for Tc with a particularly large value of its characteristic phonon energy omega_ln which is due to the small hydrogen mass. We find that the thermodynamic universal BCS ratios are near those for Pb and Nb3Sn. We suggest that optical measurements could be a useful tool to establish the existence and nature of the superconductivity in this system. Conventional superconductors are in the impurity-dominated dirty limit. By contrast sulfur hydride will be in the clean limit because of its large energy gap scale. The AC optical conductivity will display distinct and separate signatures of the superconducting gap in the low-energy impurity-dominated range of the optical spectrum and additional phonon structures at higher energies where the clean limit applies.
This article reports the experimentally clarified crystal structure of a recently discovered sulfur hydride in high temperature superconducting phase which has the highest critical temperature Tc over 200 K which has been ever reported. For understanding the mechanism of the high superconductivity, the information of its crystal structure is very essential. Herein we have carried out the simultaneous measurements electrical resistance and synchrotron x-ray diffraction under high pressure, and clearly revealed that the hydrogen sulfide, H2S, decomposes to H3S and its crystal structure has body-centered cubic symmetry in the superconducting phase.
The recent discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in single-layer iron selenide has generated significant experimental interest for optimizing the superconducting properties of iron-based superconductors through the lattice modification. For simulating the similar effect by changing the chemical composition due to S doping, we investigate the superconducting properties of high-quality single crystals of FeSe$_{1-x}$S$_{x}$ ($x$=0, 0.04, 0.09, and 0.11) using magnetization, resistivity, the London penetration depth, and low temperature specific heat measurements. We show that the introduction of S to FeSe enhances the superconducting transition temperature $T_{c}$, anisotropy, upper critical field $H_{c2}$, and critical current density $J_{c}$. The upper critical field $H_{c2}(T)$ and its anisotropy are strongly temperature dependent, indicating a multiband superconductivity in this system. Through the measurements and analysis of the London penetration depth $lambda _{ab}(T)$ and specific heat, we show clear evidence for strong coupling two-gap $s$-wave superconductivity. The temperature-dependence of $lambda _{ab}(T)$ calculated from the lower critical field and electronic specific heat can be well described by using a two-band model with $s$-wave-like gaps. We find that a $d$-wave and single-gap BCS theory under the weak-coupling approach can not describe our experiments. The change of specific heat induced by the magnetic field can be understood only in terms of multiband superconductivity.
This review introduces known candidates for bulk topological superconductors and categorizes them with time-reversal symmetry (TRS) and gap structures. Recent studies on two archetypal topological superconductors, TRS-broken Sr2RuO4 and TRS-preserved CuxBi2Se3, are described in some detail.
We study the dynamical quasiparticle scattering by spin and charge fluctuations in Fe-based pnictides within a five-orbital model with on-site interactions. The leading contribution to the scattering rate is calculated from the second-order diagrams with the polarization operator calculated in the random-phase approximation. We find one-particle scattering rates which are highly anisotropic on each Fermi surface sheet due to the momentum dependence of the spin susceptibility and the multi-orbital composition of each Fermi pocket. This fact, combined with the anisotropy of the effective mass, produces disparity between electrons and holes in conductivity, the Hall coefficient, and the Raman initial slope, in qualitative agreement with experimental data.
Nematic superconductivity is a novel class of superconductivity characterized by spontaneous rotational-symmetry breaking in the superconducting gap amplitude and/or Cooper-pair spins with respect to the underlying lattice symmetry. Doped Bi2Se3 superconductors, such as CuxBi2Se3, SrxBi2Se3, and NbxBi2Se3, are considered as candidates for nematic superconductors, in addition to the anticipated topological superconductivity. Recently, various bulk probes, such as nuclear magnetic resonance, specific heat, magnetotransport, magnetic torque, and magnetization, have consistently revealed two-fold symmetric behavior in their in-plane magnetic-field-direction dependence, although the underlying crystal lattice possesses three-fold rotational symmetry. More recently, nematic superconductivity is directly visualized using scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy. In this short review, we summarize the current researches on the nematic behavior in superconducting doped Bi2Se3 systems, and discuss issues and perspectives.