First Observation of de Haas-van Alphen Effect and Fermi Surfaces in Unconventional Superconductor UTe2

TL;DR

This study reports the first observation of the de Haas-van Alphen effect in UTe2, revealing detailed Fermi surface structures and effective masses, advancing understanding of its unconventional superconductivity.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental detection of Fermi surfaces and dHvA oscillations in UTe2, confirming theoretical predictions and revealing mass enhancement effects.

Findings

Detection of two dHvA branches, alpha and beta, indicating cylindrical Fermi surfaces.

Large cyclotron effective masses ranging from 32 to 57 m0, much higher than band masses.

Good agreement between experimental data and GGA calculations, suggesting main Fermi surfaces are identified.

Abstract

We report the first observation of the de Haas-van Alphen (dHvA) effect in the novel spin-triplet superconductor UTe2 using high quality single crystals with the high residual resistivity ratio (RRR) over 200. The dHvA frequencies, named alpha and beta, are detected for the field directions between c and a-axes. The frequency of branch beta increases rapidly with the field angle tilted from c to a-axis, while branch alpha splits, owing to the maximal and minimal cross-sectional areas from the same Fermi surface. Both dHvA branches, alpha and beta reveal two kinds of cylindrical Fermi surfaces with a strong corrugation at least for branch alpha. The angular dependence of the dHvA frequencies is in very good agreement with that calculated by the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) method taking into account the on-site Coulomb repulsion of U = 2 eV, indicating the main Fermi surfaces are experimentally detected. The detected cyclotron effective masses are large in the range from 32 to 57 m0 . They are approximately 10-20 times lager than the corresponding band masses, consistent with the mass enhancement obtained from the Sommerfeld coefficient and the calculated density of states at the Fermi level. The local density approximation (LDA) calculations of ThTe2 assuming U4+ with the 5f^2 localized model are in less agreement with our experimental results, in spite of the prediction for two cylindrical Fermi surfaces, suggesting a mixed valence states of U4+ and U3+ in UTe2.