- Letter
Strong superconducting pairing strength and pseudogap features in a putative multiphase heavy-fermion superconductor studied by soft point contact spectroscopy
Phys. Rev. B 111, L180501 – Published 2 May, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.111.L180501
Abstract
is a newly discovered candidate of multiphase heavy-fermion superconductor with intriguing physical properties. Here, we employ soft point-contact spectroscopy to investigate its energy gap behaviors in both the normal and superconducting states. The differential conductance below reveals an estimated superconducting energy gap of meV and thus an extremely strong superconducting pairing strength , which is comparable to those of cuprates and iron-based high- superconductors as well as infinite-layer nickelates. Above , a well-defined pseudogap feature is manifested as a V-shaped dip in the differential conductance spanning an energy scale of meV. The pseudogap feature persists to the highest characteristic temperature of K and is gradually suppressed by magnetic field of T regardless of its direction relative to the crystallographic axes. The observation of pseudogap features prior to the superconducting phase transition enriches the phase diagram of and provides a platform to study the interplay of unconventional superconductivity and pseudogap phenomena.