Extrinsic and Intrinsic Anomalous Metallic States in Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Ising Superconductors

TL;DR

This study investigates both extrinsic and intrinsic anomalous metallic states in 2D transition metal dichalcogenide superconductors at ultralow temperatures, revealing the quantum ground state and Ising superconductivity characteristics.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence distinguishing extrinsic from intrinsic anomalous metallic states in 2D TMD superconductors and demonstrates Ising superconductivity beyond the Pauli limit.

Findings

Resistance saturation due to external noise observed

Intrinsic anomalous metallic state confirmed at ultralow temperatures

Ultrahigh in-plane critical field indicating Ising superconductivity

Abstract

The metallic ground state in two-dimensional (2D) superconductors has attracted much attention but is still under intense scrutiny. Especially, the measurements in ultralow temperature region are challenging for 2D superconductors due to the sensitivity to external perturbations. In this work, the resistance saturation induced by external noise, named as "extrinsic anomalous metallic state", is observed in 2D transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) superconductor 4Ha-TaSe2 nanodevices. However, with further decreasing temperature, credible evidence of intrinsic anomalous metallic state is obtained by adequately filtering external radiation. Our work indicates that at ultralow temperatures the anomalous metallic state can be experimentally revealed as the quantum ground state in 2D crystalline TMD superconductors. Besides, Ising superconductivity revealed by ultrahigh in-plane critical field (Bc2//) going beyond the Pauli paramagnetic limit (Bp) is detected in 4Ha-TaSe2, from one-unit-cell device to bulk situation, which might be due to the weak coupling between the TaSe2 sub-monolayers.