CeCu$_{2}$Si$_{2}$ and YbRh$_{2}$Si$_{2}$: Strange Cases of Heavy-Fermion Superconductivity

TL;DR

This paper compares the unconventional superconductivity and magnetic properties of CeCu$_{2}$Si$_{2}$ and YbRh$_{2}$Si$_{2}$, highlighting their different magnetic instabilities but similar Fermi surface fluctuation-driven pairing mechanisms.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of two heavy-fermion superconductors, emphasizing the role of Fermi surface fluctuations and magnetic order in their superconducting behavior.

Findings

Both compounds exhibit antiferromagnetic instabilities with different types.

Superconductivity and strange-metal behavior are driven by Fermi surface fluctuations.

Transport and STS are dominated by single-ion Kondo scatterings at low temperatures.

Abstract

The heavy-fermion superconductor CeCu$_{2}$Si$_{2}$ exhibits two-band, $d$-wave superconductivity with a finite energy gap over the whole Fermi surface around the magnetic instability where 4$f$ antiferrerromagnetic order is suppressed. In contrast, in YbRh$_{2}$Si$_{2}$ heavy-fermion superconductivity appears only when 4$f$-electronic antiferromagnetic order is replaced at ultra-low temperatures by a combined nuclear and 4$f$-spin order. Whereas both compounds exhibit different variants of antiferromagnetic instabilities, i.e., a spin-density-wave quantum critical point in CeCu$_{2}$Si$_{2}$ and one of "partial-Mott" type in YbRh$_{2}$Si$_{2}$, in both cases the Cooper pairing, as well as the pronounced "strange-metal" behavior in YbRh$_{2}$Si$_{2}$, appear to be driven by large-to-small Fermi surface fluctuations. The transport properties and scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) for these materials are dominated by single-ion Kondo scatterings down to very low temperatures. Further open problems of the Kondo lattice include both the interplay between superconductivity and antiferromagnetic order as well as the onset of lattice coherence. While microscopic coexistence of superconductivity and antiferromagnetism seems to require a sufficiently large staggered moment, the onset of lattice coherence in transport measurements and STS is associated solely with the crystal-field-doublet ground state, while it involves the fully degenerate Hund's rule multiplet in ARPES.