Polar charge density wave in a superconductor with crystallographic chirality.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 39468076.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-53627-1 and PMC identifier 11519370.
- No licence information is recorded for this record.
- Because redistribution is not established, this page shows the abstract only. Follow the links below for the full text.
Abstract
Symmetry plays an important role in determining the physical properties in condensed matter physics, as the symmetry operations of any physical property must include the symmetry operations of the point group of the crystal. As a consequence, crystallographic polarity and chirality are expected to have an impact on the Cooper pairing in a superconductor. While superconductivity with crystallographic polarity and chirality have both been found in a few crystalline phases separately; however, their coexistence and material realizations have not been studied. Here, by utilizing transport, Raman scattering, and transmission electron microscopy, we unveil a unique realization of superconductivity in single-crystalline Mo<sub>3</sub>Al<sub>2</sub>C (superconducting T<sub>c</sub>=8 K) with a polar charge-density-wave phase and well-defined crystallographic chirality. We show that the intriguing charge density wave order leads to a noncentrosymmetric-nonpolar to polar transition below T*=155K via breaking both the translational and rotational symmetries. Superconductivity emerges in this polar and chiral crystal structure below T<sub>c</sub>=8 K. Our results establish that Mo<sub>3</sub>Al<sub>2</sub>C is a superconductor with crystallographic polarity and chirality simultaneously, and motivate future studies of unconventional superconductivity in this category.