Colossal enhancement of upper critical fields in noncentrosymmetric heavy fermion superconductors near quantum criticality: CeRhSi$_3$ and CeIrSi$_3$

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in noncentrosymmetric heavy fermion superconductors near quantum criticality, strong spin fluctuations and spin-orbit interactions lead to a dramatic increase in upper critical fields, explaining recent experimental observations.

Contribution

It provides a microscopic explanation for the colossal enhancement of $H_{c2}$ in CeRhSi$_3$ and CeIrSi$_3$ near quantum criticality, highlighting universal properties of strong coupling superconductivity.

Findings

$H_{c2}$ reaches ~30T near quantum criticality.

The enhancement of $H_{c2}$ is mainly due to orbital depairing effects.

Results align with recent experimental data.

Abstract

Strong coupling effects on the upper critical fields $H_{c2}$ along the c-axis in the noncentrosymmetric heavy fermion superconductors near quantum criticality CeRhSi$_3$ and CeIrSi$_3$ are examined. For sufficiently large spin-orbit interactions due to the lack of inversion symmetry, $H_{c2}$ is mainly determined by the orbital depairing effects. From microscopic calculations taking into account the strong spin fluctuations, we show that $H_{c2}$ is extremely enhanced as the system approaches the quantum critical point, resulting in $H_{c2}\sim 30$T even in the case with the low transition temperature $T_c(H=0)\sim 1$K, which well explains the huge $H_{c2}$ observed in the recent experiments. Our results reveal intrinsic and universal properties common to strong coupling superconductivity caused by spin fluctuations near quantum criticality.