Mott-driven BEC-BCS crossover in a doped spin liquid candidate, kappa-(BEDT-TTF)4Hg2.89Br8

TL;DR

This study investigates how doping and pressure induce a transition from BEC-like to BCS-like superconductivity in a doped spin liquid candidate, revealing a tunable Mott-driven BEC-BCS crossover with distinct experimental signatures.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental evidence of a pressure-induced Mott-driven BEC-BCS crossover in a doped spin liquid material, linking strongly correlated electron behavior to superconducting pairing regimes.

Findings

Superconductivity transitions from BEC-like to BCS-like with increasing pressure.

Transport measurements show non-Fermi liquid to Fermi liquid crossover.

Nernst-effect measurements distinguish the two pairing regimes.

Abstract

The pairing of interacting fermions leading to superfluidity has two limiting regimes: the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) scheme for weakly interacting degenerate fermions and the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of bosonic pairs of strongly interacting fermions. While the superconductivity that emerges in most metallic systems is the BCS-like electron pairing, strongly correlated electrons with poor Fermi liquidity can condense into the unconventional BEC-like pairs. Quantum spin liquids harbor extraordinary spin correlation free from order and the superconductivity that possibly emerges by carrier doping of the spin liquids is expected to have a peculiar pairing nature. The present study experimentally explores the nature of the pairing condensate in a doped spin-liquid candidate material and under varying pressure, which changes the electron-electron Coulombic interactions across the Mott critical value in the system. The transport measurements reveal that the superconductivity at low pressures is a BEC-like condensate from a non-Fermi liquid and crosses over to a BCS-like condensate from a Fermi liquid at high pressures. The Nernst-effect measurements distinctively illustrate the two regimes of the pairing in terms of its robustness to the magnetic field. The present Mott tuning of the BEC-BCS crossover can be compared to the Feshbach tuning of the BEC-BCS crossover of fermionic cold atoms.