Condensed Matter Journal Club

Strong peak in Tc of Sr2RuO4 under uniaxial pressure

Wednesday, 01 November 2017 12:00PM PDT
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Condensed Matter Journal Club
 
Taras Chouinard
DEPT of Physics, SFU
 
Strong peak in Tc of Sr2RuO4 under uniaxial pressure
 
Nov 01, 2017 at 12PM
 

Synopsis

Sr2RuO4 is an unconventional superconductor that has attracted widespread study because of its high purity and the possibility that its superconducting order parameter has odd parity. We study the dependence of its superconductivity on anisotropic strain. Applying uniaxial pressures of up to ~1 gigapascals along a <100> direction (a axis) of the crystal lattice results in the transition temperature (Tc) increasing from 1.5 kelvin in the unstrained material to 3.4 kelvin at compression by ≈0.6%, and then falling steeply. Calculations give evidence that the observed maximum Tc occurs at or near a Lifshitz transition when the Fermi level passes through a Van Hove singularity, and open the possibility that the highly strained, Tc = 3.4 K Sr2RuO4 has an even-parity, rather than an odd-parity, order parameter.