Upper limit on spontaneous supercurrents in Sr2RuO4

J. R. Kirtley, C. Kallin, C. W. Hicks, E.-A. Kim, Y. Liu, K. A. Moler, Y. Maeno, and K. D. Nelson
Phys. Rev. B 76, 014526 – Published 26 July 2007

Abstract

It is widely believed that the perovskite Sr2RuO4 is an unconventional superconductor with broken time-reversal symmetry. It has been predicted that superconductors with broken time-reversal symmetry should have spontaneously generated supercurrents at edges and domain walls. We have done careful imaging of the magnetic fields above Sr2RuO4 single crystals using scanning Hall bar and superconducting quantum interference device microscopies, and see no evidence for such spontaneously generated supercurrents. We use the results from our magnetic imaging to place upper limits on the spontaneously generated supercurrents at edges and domain walls as a function of domain size. For a single domain, this upper limit is below the predicted signal by 2 orders of magnitude. We speculate on the causes and implications of the lack of large spontaneous supercurrents in this very interesting superconducting system.

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  • Received 25 April 2007

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.76.014526

©2007 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

J. R. Kirtley1,2,3, C. Kallin4, C. W. Hicks1, E.-A. Kim5,6, Y. Liu7, K. A. Moler1,5, Y. Maeno8, and K. D. Nelson7

  • 1Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California 94305, USA
  • 2IBM Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598, USA
  • 3Faculty of Science and Technology and MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Twente, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
  • 4Department of Physics and Astronomy, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4M1
  • 5Department of Physics, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California 94305, USA
  • 6Stanford Institute of Theoretical Physics, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California 94305, USA
  • 7Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, 16802, USA
  • 8Department of Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan

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Issue

Vol. 76, Iss. 1 — 1 July 2007

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