Evidence for Unconventional Strong-coupling Superconductivity in PrOs_4Sb_12 : An Sb Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance (NQR) Study

TL;DR

This study provides evidence of unconventional strong-coupling superconductivity in PrOs_4Sb_12 through Sb-NQR measurements, revealing heavy-fermion behavior, a unique energy gap opening, and deviations from typical superconducting characteristics.

Contribution

The paper presents the first Sb-NQR evidence of heavy-fermion behavior and unconventional strong-coupling superconductivity in PrOs_4Sb_12, highlighting its distinct superconducting gap properties.

Findings

Heavy-fermion behavior confirmed by T_1T=const. below 4 K

Unconventional superconductivity with a large isotropic energy gap

Absence of coherence peak and line-node gap features

Abstract

We report Sb-NQR results which evidence a heavy-fermion (HF) behavior and an unconventional superconducting (SC) property in the filled-skutterudite compound PrOs_4Sb_12 revealing a SC transition temperature T_c=1.85 K. The temperature (T) dependence of nuclear-spin-lattice-relaxation rate 1/T_1 and NQR frequency unravel a low-lying crystal-electric-field splitting below T_0~10 K, associated with Pr^3+ (4f^2)-derived ground state. The emergence of T_1T=const. behavior below T_F~4 K points to the formation of heavy-quasiparticle state. In the SC state, 1/T_1 shows neither a coherence peak nor a T^3like power-law behavior observed for HF superconductors to date. The isotropic energy-gap with a size of gap Delta/k_B=4.8 K begins to already open up at T^*~2.3 K without any coherence effect just below T_c=1.85 K. We highlight that the superconductivity in PrOs_4Sb_12, which is in an unconventional strong-coupling regime, differs from a conventional s-wave type and any unconventional ones with the line-node gap.