Inhomogeneous high temperature melting and decoupling of charge density waves in spin-triplet superconductor UTe<sub>2</sub>.
basic_science · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38796494.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-48844-7 and PMC identifier 11127989.
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Abstract
Charge, spin and Cooper-pair density waves have now been widely detected in exotic superconductors. Understanding how these density waves emerge - and become suppressed by external parameters - is a key research direction in condensed matter physics. Here we study the temperature and magnetic-field evolution of charge density waves in the rare spin-triplet superconductor candidate UTe<sub>2</sub> using scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy. We reveal that charge modulations composed of three different wave vectors gradually weaken in a spatially inhomogeneous manner, while persisting to surprisingly high temperatures of 10-12 K. We also reveal an unexpected decoupling of the three-component charge density wave state. Our observations match closely to the temperature scale potentially related to short-range magnetic correlations, providing a possible connection between density waves observed by surface probes and intrinsic bulk features. Importantly, charge density wave modulations become suppressed with magnetic field both below and above superconducting T<sub>c</sub> in a comparable manner. Our work points towards an intimate connection between hidden magnetic correlations and the origin of the unusual charge density waves in UTe<sub>2</sub>.