The order parameter and pairing mechanism for superconductivity in heavy fermion compounds are still poorly understood. Scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy at ultra-low temperatures can yield important information about the superconducting
order parameter and the gap structure. Here, we study the first heavy fermion superconductor, CeCu_2Si_2. Our data show the superconducting gap which is not fully formed and exhibits features that point to a multi-gap order parameter. Spatial mapping of the zero bias conductance in magnetic field reveals the vortex lattice, which allows us to unequivocally link the observed conductance gap to superconductivity in CeCu_2Si_2. The vortex lattice is found to be predominantly triangular with distortions at fields close to sim 0.7 H_{c2}.
In non-magnetic bulk materials, inversion symmetry protects the spin degeneracy. If the bulk crystal structure lacks a centre of inversion, however, spin-orbit interactions lift the spin degeneracy, leading to a Rashba metal whose Fermi surfaces exhi
bit an intricate spin texture. In superconducting Rashba metals a pairing wavefunction constructed from these complex spin structures will generally contain both singlet and triplet character. Here we examine the possible triplet components of the order parameter in noncentrosymmetric BiPd, combining for the first time in a noncentrosymmetric superconductor macroscopic characterization, atomic-scale ultra-low-temperature scanning tunnelling spectroscopy, and relativistic first-principles calculations. While the superconducting state of BiPd appears topologically trivial, consistent with Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory with an order parameter governed by a single isotropic s-wave gap, we show that the material exhibits Dirac-cone surface states with a helical spin polarization.
Epitaxial graphene grown on transition metal surfaces typically exhibits a moire pattern due to the lattice mismatch between graphene and the underlying metal surface. We use both scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM)
experiments to probe the electronic and topographic contrast of the graphene moire on the Ir(111) surface. While STM topography is influenced by the local density of states close to the Fermi energy and the local tunneling barrier height, AFM is capable of yielding the true surface topography once the background force arising from the van der Waals (vdW) interaction between the tip and the substrate is taken into account. We observe a moire corrugation of 35$pm$10 pm, where the graphene-Ir(111) distance is the smallest in the areas where the graphene honeycomb is atop the underlying iridium atoms and larger on the fcc or hcp threefold hollow sites.
