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Evidence for d-wave superconductivity of infinite-layer nickelates from low-energy electrodynamics

Nature Materials (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

The discovery of superconductivity in infinite-layer nickelates established another category of unconventional superconductors that shares structural and electronic similarities with cuprates. However, key issues of the superconducting pairing symmetry, gap amplitude and superconducting fluctuations are yet to be addressed. Here we utilize static and ultrafast terahertz spectroscopy to address these. We demonstrate that the equilibrium terahertz conductivity and non-equilibrium terahertz responses of an optimally Sr-doped nickelate film (superconducting transition temperature of Tc = 17 K) are in line with the electrodynamics of d-wave superconductivity in the dirty limit. The gap-to-Tc ratio (2Δ/kBTc) is found to be 3.4, indicating that the superconductivity falls in the weak coupling regime. In addition, we observed substantial superconducting fluctuations near Tc that do not extend into the deep normal state as the optimally hole-doped cuprates do. Our results support a d-wave system that closely resembles the electron-doped cuprates.

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Fig. 1: Equilibrium THz conductivity of nickelate superconducting film Nd0.85Sr0.15NiO2.
Fig. 2: Ultrafast THz conductivity change Δσ(tpp, ω) at 3 K induced by optical excitations.
Fig. 3: Ultrafast superconducting kinetics to extract the superconducting gap 2Δ.
Fig. 4: Superconducting fluctuation in the nickelate film.

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The data that support the findings of this work are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Information. Additional data related to the paper are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

The THz spectroscopy measurement was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Science, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering (Ames National Laboratory is operated for the US Department of Energy by Iowa State University under contract no. DE-AC02-07CH11358). B.C. was supported by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development project, Ames National Laboratory (superconductivity). Work at the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (K.L., Z.Y.C., Y.L., B.Y.W., Z.-X.S. and H.Y.H.) was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division under contract no. DE-AC02-76SF00515 (synthesis and transport measurement) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems Initiative (grant no. GBMF9072, synthesis equipment). The authors thank T. P. Devereaux and S. D. Chen for helpful discussions, M. Gonzalez for sample arrangement and S. J. Haeuser for proofreading.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ames National Laboratory, Ames, IA, USA

    Bing Cheng, Di Cheng, Liang Luo, Martin Mootz & Jigang Wang

  2. Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Kyuho Lee, Zhuoyu Chen, Yonghun Lee, Bai Yang Wang, Zhi-Xun Shen & Harold Y. Hwang

  3. Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Kyuho Lee, Bai Yang Wang & Zhi-Xun Shen

  4. Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Zhuoyu Chen, Yonghun Lee, Zhi-Xun Shen & Harold Y. Hwang

  5. Department of Physics, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Zhuoyu Chen

  6. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA

    Martin Mootz & Jigang Wang

  7. Department of Physics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

    Ilias E. Perakis

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Contributions

B.C., Z.-X.S., H.Y.H. and J.W. initiated the project. B.C. and D.C. performed the measurements with the help of L.L. K.L., Y.L., B.Y.W. and H.Y.H. developed samples and performed transport characterizations. B.C. and J.W. analysed the spectroscopy data with the help of L.L., Z.Y.C., M.M. and I.E.P. The manuscript was written by B.C. and J.W. with input from all authors. J.W. supervised the project.

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Correspondence to Bing Cheng or Jigang Wang.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–8 and discussion.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Equilibrium THz conductivity across Tc.

Source Data Fig. 2

Ultrafast THz conductivity at 3 K.

Source Data Fig. 3

Ultrafast THz data for extracting superconducting gap.

Source Data Fig. 4

Ultrafast THz data to reveal superconducting fluctuation.

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Cheng, B., Cheng, D., Lee, K. et al. Evidence for d-wave superconductivity of infinite-layer nickelates from low-energy electrodynamics. Nat. Mater. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01766-z

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