A Family of Lanthanide Noncentrosymmetric Superconductors La$_4$$TX$ ($T$ = Ru, Rh, Ir; $X$ = Al, In)

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of a series of noncentrosymmetric lanthanide-based superconductors with varying critical temperatures, exploring their electronic properties and the tunability of antisymmetric spin-orbit coupling effects.

Contribution

The study introduces a new family of noncentrosymmetric superconductors La$_4$$TX$ and analyzes their superconducting and electronic properties, highlighting the tunability of antisymmetric spin-orbit coupling.

Findings

Superconducting transition temperatures range from 0.58 K to 3.05 K.

Specific heat data support s-wave superconductivity with a fully open gap.

Density functional theory shows variable antisymmetric spin-orbit coupling across compounds.

Abstract

We report the discovery of superconductivity in a series of noncentrosymmetric compounds La$_4$$TX$ ($T$ = Ru, Rh, Ir; $X$ = Al, In), which have a cubic crystal structure with space group $F\bar{4}3m$. La$_4$RuAl, La$_4$RhAl, La$_4$IrAl, La$_4$RuIn and La$_4$IrIn exhibit bulk superconducting transitions with critical temperatures $T_c$ of 1.77 K, 3.05 K, 1.54 K, 0.58 K and 0.93 K, respectively. The specific heat of the La$_4$$T$Al compounds are consistent with an $s$-wave model with a fully open superconducting gap. In all cases, the upper critical fields are well described by the Werthamer-Helfand-Hohenberg model, and the values are well below the Pauli limit, indicating that orbital limiting is the dominant pair-breaking mechanism. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that the degree of band splitting by the antisymmetric spin-orbit coupling (ASOC) shows considerable variation between the different compounds. This indicates that the strength of the ASOC is highly tunable across this series of superconductors, suggesting that these are good candidates for examining the relationship between the ASOC and superconducting properties in noncentrosymmetric superconductors.