2021/04/08 by Adarsh S. Patri, Yong Baek Kim · 11 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Angular momentum #Condensed matter physics #Cooper pair #Electron #Iron-based superconductors research #Kondo effect #Kondo insulator #Pairing #Parity (physics) #Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum mechanics #Quasiparticle #Rare-earth and actinide compounds #Superconductivity #cond-mat.str-el #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · open access · doi:10.21468/scipostphys.12.2.057
published in SciPost Physics 12(2) (SciPost.org) · 7 pages + 9 pages Appendix + 3 pages References
arxiv created 2021/04/08 · openalex publication_date 2022/02/09 · arxiv updated 2022/03/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The nature of unconventional superconductivity is intimately linked to the microscopic nature of the pairing interactions. In this work, motivated by cubic heavy fermion compounds with embedded multipolar moments, we theoretically investigate superconducting instabilities instigated by multipolar Kondo interactions. Employing multipolar fluctuations (mediated by RKKY interaction) coupled to conduction electrons via two-channel Kondo and novel multipolar Kondo interactions, we uncover a variety of superconducting states characterized by higher-angular momentum Cooper pairs, J=0,1,2,3. We demonstrate that both odd and even parity pairing functions are possible, regardless of the total angular momentum of the Cooper pairs, which can be traced back to the atypical nature of the multipolar Kondo interaction that intertwines conduction electron spin and orbital degrees of freedom. We determine that different (point-group) irrep classified pairing functions may coexist with each other, with some of them characterized by gapped and point node structures in their corresponding quasiparticle spectra. This work lays the foundation for discovery and classification of superconducting states in rare-earth metallic compounds with multipolar local moments.