Possible Spin-triplet Superconductivity in NaxCoO2yH2O - 59Co NMR Study

TL;DR

This study uses 59Co NMR to investigate the superconducting state of NaxCoO2yH2O, providing evidence for possible spin-triplet pairing with unconventional properties, including invariant Knight shift below Tc.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed NMR analysis suggesting spin-triplet superconductivity in NaxCoO2yH2O, highlighting its unconventional pairing symmetry.

Findings

Knight shift remains unchanged below Tc at 7 T

No coherence peak observed in 1/T1 below Tc

Evidence suggests spin-triplet p- or f-wave pairing

Abstract

We report 59Co NMR studies on the magnetically oriented powder samples of Co-oxide superconductors NaxCoO2yH2O with Tc ~ 4.7 K. From two-dimensional powder pattern in the NMR spectrum, the ab-plane Knight shift in the normal state was estimated by the magnetic field dependence of second-order quadrupole shifts at various temperatures. Below 50 K, the Knight shift shows a Curie-Weiss-like temperature dependence, similarly to the bulk magnetic susceptibility chi. From the analysis of so-called K-chi plot, the spin and the orbital components of K and the positive hyperfine coupling constant were estimated. The onset temperature of superconducting transition in the Knight shift does not change so much in an applied magnetic field up to 7 T, which is consistent with the reported high upper critical field Hc2. The Knight shift at 7 T shows an invariant behavior below Tc. No coherence peak just below Tc was observed in the temperature dependence of the nuclear spin-lattice relaxation rate 1/T1 in both cases of NMR and NQR. We conclude that the invariant behavior of the Knight shift below Tc and unconventional behaviors of 1/T possibly indicate the spin-triplet superconductivity with p- or f-wave symmetry.