A disorder-enhanced quasi-one-dimensional superconductor

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that disorder can unexpectedly enhance superconductivity in a quasi-one-dimensional material, revealing new ways to tune electronic phases in low-dimensional systems.

Contribution

It provides the first evidence that disorder can enhance superconductivity in a q1D superconductor, challenging conventional understanding.

Findings

Disorder enhances superconducting instability in Na$_{2- ext{delta}}$Mo$_6$Se$_6$.

Disorder may suppress Coulomb pair-breaking via intrinsic long-range Coulomb screening.

Results suggest disorder can induce and tune correlated electron phases in low-dimensional materials.

Abstract

A powerful approach to analysing quantum systems with dimensionality $d>1$ involves adding a weak coupling to an array of one-dimensional (1D) chains. The resultant quasi-one-dimensional (q1D) systems can exhibit long-range order at low temperature, but are heavily influenced by interactions and disorder due to their large anisotropies. Real q1D materials are therefore ideal candidates not only to provoke, test and refine theories of strongly correlated matter, but also to search for unusual emergent electronic phases. Here we report the unprecedented enhancement of a superconducting instability by disorder in single crystals of Na$_{2-\delta}$Mo$_6$Se$_6$, a q1D superconductor comprising MoSe chains weakly coupled by Na atoms. We argue that disorder-enhanced Coulomb pair-breaking (which usually destroys superconductivity) may be averted due to a screened long-range Coulomb repulsion intrinsic to disordered q1D materials. Our results illustrate the capability of disorder to tune and induce new correlated electron physics in low-dimensional materials.