Full-Gap Superconductivity Robust against Disorder in Heavy-Fermion CeCu2Si2

T. Takenaka, Y. Mizukami, J. A. Wilcox, M. Konczykowski, S. Seiro, C. Geibel, Y. Tokiwa, Y. Kasahara, C. Putzke, Y. Matsuda, A. Carrington, T. Shibauchi
2017 Physical Review Letters  
A key aspect of unconventional pairing by the antiferromagnetic spin-fluctuation mechanism is that the superconducting energy gap must have opposite sign on different parts of the Fermi surface. Recent observations of non-nodal gap structure in the heavy-fermion superconductor CeCu_2Si_2 were then very surprising, given that this material has long been considered a prototypical example of a superconductor where the Cooper pairing is magnetically mediated. Here we present a study of the effect
more » ... controlled point defects, introduced by electron irradiation, on the temperature-dependent magnetic penetration depth λ(T) in CeCu_2Si_2. We find that the fully-gapped state is robust against disorder, demonstrating that low-energy bound states, expected for sign-changing gap structures, are not induced by nonmagnetic impurities. This provides bulk evidence for s_++-wave superconductivity without sign reversal.
doi:10.1103/physrevlett.119.077001 pmid:28949698 fatcat:imxxm4cdq5b3fgogrpumyebxla