Effect of disorder on the pressure-induced superconducting state of CeAu2Si2

TL;DR

This study investigates how disorder affects superconductivity in CeAu2Si2 under pressure, revealing that increased disorder suppresses superconductivity and induces a new phase transition, indicating unconventional pairing.

Contribution

It demonstrates the critical role of nonmagnetic disorder in suppressing superconductivity and introduces a possible new phase transition within the magnetic state of CeAu2Si2.

Findings

Superconductivity is rapidly suppressed with increased disorder.

Magnetic properties remain unaffected by disorder levels.

A new phase transition at T* emerges with higher disorder.

Abstract

CeAu2Si2 is a newly discovered pressure-induced heavy fermion superconductor which shows very unusual interplay between superconductivity and magnetism under pressure. Here we compare the results of high-pressure measurements on single crystalline CeAu2Si2 samples with different levels of disorder. It is found that while the magnetic properties are essentially sample independent, superconductivity is rapidly suppressed when the residual resistivity of the sample increases. We show that the depression of bulk Tc can be well understood in terms of pair breaking by nonmagnetic disorder, which strongly suggests an unconventional pairing state in pressurized CeAu2Si2. Furthermore, increasing the level of disorder leads to the emergence of another phase transition at T* within the magnetic phase, which might be in competition with superconductivity.