Imaging Cooper pairing of heavy fermions in CeCoIn 5
Abstract
The Cooper pairing mechanism of heavy fermionsuperconductors, long thought to be due to spin fluctuations, has not yet been determined. It is the momentum space (k-space) structure of the superconducting energy gap Δ(k) that encodes specifics of this pairing mechanism. However, because the energy scales are so low, it has not been possible to directly measure Δ(k) for any heavy fermion superconductor. Bogoliubov quasiparticle interference imaging, a proven technique for measuring the energy gaps of superconductors with high critical temperatures, has recently been proposed as a new method to measure Δ(k) in heavy fermion superconductors, specifically CeCoIn 5 Ref.). By implementing this method, we detect a superconducting energy gap whose nodes are oriented along kâ̂¥(±1,±1)π/a 0 directions. Moreover, for the first time in any heavy fermion superconductor, we determine the detailed structure of its multiband energy gaps Δ i (k). For CeCoIn 5, this information includes: the complex band structure and Fermi surface of the hybridized heavy bands, the fact that largest magnitude Δ(k) opens on a high- k band so that the primary gap nodes occur at unforeseen k-space locations, and that the Bogoliubov quasiparticle interference patterns are most consistent with d x 2 -y 2 gap symmetry. Such quantitative knowledge of both the heavy band-structure and superconducting gap-structure will be critical in identifying the microscopic pairing mechanism of heavy fermion superconductivity. © 2013 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.