English

Multiple nodal superconducting phases and order-parameter evolution in pressurized UTe$_2$

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2026-01-06 v1 Materials Science Superconductivity

Abstract

Spin-triplet superconductivity (SC) offers a unique avenue for realizing non-Abelian Majorana zero modes and thus the fault-tolerant topological quantum computation, and has attracted a broad audience for both fundamental research and potential applications. The recently discovered heavy-fermion spin-triplet superconductor candidate UTe2_2 has sparked great interest for its ultrahigh upper critical field and reentrant SC phases in the proximity to a field-polarized magnetic state. Despite extensive studies on the phase diagrams and competing orders induced by pressure and magnetic field, limited has been known about its SC order parameters and their evolution with these control parameters, largely due to the lack of appropriate symmetry-sensitive detections. Here, we report comprehensive point-contact spectroscopy measurements of pressurized UTe2_2 on the (0~0~1) surface. The observation of Andreev bound state strongly suggests the presence of a pzp_z component in the SC order parameters. Quantitative analysis based on an extended Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk model unveils B2uB_{2u} or B3uB_{3u} as the most likely representation for both ambient and pressurized UTe2_2, and remarkably, the multiple SC phases can be distinguished by a single parameter Δz/Δx(y)\langle \Delta_{z}\rangle/\langle\Delta_{x(y)}\rangle, the relative weight between the pzp_z-wave and px(y)p_{x(y)}-wave pairings. These findings not only impose stringent constraints on the superconducting order parameter in UTe2_2, but also provide key spectroscopic evidence for the existence of multiple SC phases tuned through pressure.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.01843,
  title  = {Multiple nodal superconducting phases and order-parameter evolution in pressurized UTe$_2$},
  author = {Shuo Zou and Fengrui Shi and Zhuolun Qiu and Jialong Zhang and Yan Zhang and Weilong Qiu and Zhuo Wang and Hai Zeng and Yinina Ma and Zheyu Wu and Andrej Cabala and Michal Valiska and Ning Li and Zihan Yang and Kaixin Ye and Jiawen Zhang and Yanan Zhang and Kangjian Luo and Binbin Zhang and Alexander G. Eaton and Chaofan Zhang and Gang Li and Jianlin Luo and Wen Huang and Huiqiu Yuan and Xin Lu and Yongkang Luo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.01843},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

21+14 pages, 5+9 figures, 1+1 tables

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:50:26.776Z