Chiral superconductors are theorized to exhibit spontaneous edge currents. Here, we found magnetic fields at the edges of UTe2, a candidate odd-parity chiral superconductor, that seem to agree with predictions for a chiral order parameter. However, we did not detect the chiral domains that would be expected, and recent polar Kerr and muon spin relaxation data in nominally clean samples argue against chiral superconductivity. Our results show that hidden sources of magnetism must be carefully ruled out when using spontaneous edge currents to identify chiral superconductivity.
@article{arxiv.2409.07668,
title = {Magnetic edge fields in UTe$_2$ near zero background fields},
author = {Yusuke Iguchi and Huiyuan Man and S. M. Thomas and Filip Ronning and Jun Ishizuka and Manfred Sigrist and Priscila F. S. Rosa and Kathryn A. Moler},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.07668},
year = {2024}
}