Uranium ditelluride (UTe2) is the strongest contender to date for a p-wave superconductor in bulk form. Here we perform a spectroscopic study of the ambient pressure superconducting phase of UTe2, measuring conductance through point-contact junctions formed by metallic contacts on different crystalline facets down to 250 mK and up to 18 T. Fitting a range of qualitatively varying spectra with a Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk(BTK) model for p-wave pairing, we can extract gap amplitude and interface barrier strength for each junction. We find good agreement with the data for a py -wave gap function with amplitude in 0.26 ± 0.06 meV. Our work provides spectroscopic evidence for a gap structure consistent with the proposed spin-triplet pairing in the superconducting state of UTe2.
@article{arxiv.2403.00933,
title = {Probing $p$-wave superconductivity in UTe$_2$ via point-contact junctions},
author = {Hyeok Yoon and Yun Suk Eo and Jihun Park and Jarryd A. Horn and Ryan G. Dorman and Shanta R. Saha and Ian M. Hayes and Ichiro Takeuchi and Philip M. R. Brydon and Johnpierre Paglione},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.00933},
year = {2024}
}