English

Effect of paramagnetic impurities on superconductivity in polyhydrides: $\textit{s}$-wave order parameter in Nd-doped LaH$_{10}$

Superconductivity 2022-07-05 v2 Materials Science

Abstract

Polyhydrides are a novel class of superconducting materials with extremely high critical parameters, which is very promising for applications. On the other hand, complete experimental study of the magnetic phase diagram for the best so far known superconductor, lanthanum decahydride LaH10_{10}, encounters a serious complication because of the large upper critical magnetic field H\textit{H}C2_{C2}(0), exceeding 120-160 T. Partial replacement of La atoms by magnetic Nd atoms results in a decrease of the upper critical field, which makes it attainable for existing pulse magnets. We found that addition of neodymium leads to significant suppression of superconductivity in LaH10_{10}: each atomic % of Nd causes decrease in T\textit{T}C_{C} by 10-11 K. Using strong pulsed magnetic fields up to 68 T, we constructed the magnetic phase diagram of the ternary (La,Nd)H10_{10} superhydride, which appears to be surprisingly linear with H\textit{H}C2_{C2} \propto |T\textit{T} - T\textit{T}C_C|. The pronounced suppression of superconductivity in LaH10_{10} by magnetic Nd atoms and the robustness of T\textit{T}C_C with respect to nonmagnetic impurities (e.g., Y, Al, C) under Anderson's theorem indicate the isotropic (s\textit{s}-wave) character of conventional electron-phonon pairing in the synthesized superhydrides.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.2203.06500,
  title  = {Effect of paramagnetic impurities on superconductivity in polyhydrides: $\textit{s}$-wave order parameter in Nd-doped LaH$_{10}$},
  author = {Dmitrii V. Semenok and Ivan A. Troyan and Andrey V. Sadakov and Di Zhou and Michele Galasso and Alexander G. Kvashnin and Ivan A. Kruglov and Alexey A. Bykov and Konstantin Y. Terent'ev and Alexander V. Cherepahin and Oleg A. Sobolevskiy and Kirill S. Pervakov and Alexey Yu. Seregin and Toni Helm and Tobias Förster and Audrey D. Grockowiak and Stanley W. Tozer and Yuki Nakamoto and Katsuya Shimizu and Vladimir M. Pudalov and Igor S. Lyubutin and Artem R. Oganov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.06500},
  year   = {2022}
}

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