A paper on supercondcutor where two exotic features unusually coexist has been published in Phys. Rev. B as a Rapid Communication and highlighted as an Editors' Suggestion.
The Zr3Ir superconductor exhibits the coexistence of two exotic, and normally distinct, features: mixed singlet-triplet pairing and broken time-reversal symmetry. Mixed singlet-triplet pairing can take place in superconductors whose crystal lattices lack inversion symmetry. This relativistic effect, which does not require the breaking of additional symmetries, nor an unconventional pairing mechanism, is often quite small. Broken time-reversal symmetry, on the other hand, means that the superconducting state is magnetic and necessitates an unconventional pairing mechanism. The coexistence of these two phenomena makes Zr3Ir a very unusual material, opening up new perspectives for their understanding.
The research is the result of a collaboration between the Paul Scherrer Institut (Switzerland), the University of Kent (U.K.), the Southwest University of Science and Technology (P. R. of China), National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan), and ETH Zürich (Switzerland).
“Time-reversal symmetry breaking in the noncentrosymmetric Zr3Ir superconductor”
T. Shang, S. K. Ghosh, J. Z. Zhao, L.-J. Chang, C. Baines, M. K. Lee, D. J. Gawryluk, M. Shi, M. Medarde, J. Quintanilla, and T. Shiroka
Phys. Rev. B 102, 020503(R) – Published 17 July 2020
https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.102.020503