Experimental results reveal changes in critical temperature under uniaxial stress and hydrostatic pressure in CeRu2, suggesting a unique superconducting state.
The exploration of tunable superconductivity in strongly correlated electron systems is a central pursuit in condensed matter physics, with implications for both fundamental understanding and potential applications. The Laves phase CeRu₂, a pyrochlore compound, exhibits a three-dimensional (3D) Kagome lattice type geometry giving rise to flat bands and degenerate Dirac points, where band structure features intertwine with strong multi-orbital interaction effects deriving from its correlated electronic structure. Here, we combine muon spin rotation ($μ$SR), uniaxial in-plane stress, and hydrostatic pressure to probe the superconducting state of CeRu₂. Uniaxial stress up to 0.22 GPa induces a dome-shaped evolution of the critical temperature Tc, with an initial plateau, successively followed by enhancement and suppression without any structural phase transition. Stress is further found to drive a crossover from anisotropic to isotropic s-wave pairing. In contrast, hydrostatic pressure up to 2.2 GPa leaves Tc largely unchanged but alters the superfluid density from exponential to linear behavior at low temperatures, indicative of nodal superconductivity under hydrostatic pressure. Taken together, these results indicate that CeRu₂ occupies an ideal position in parameter space, enabling highly responsive and multifold tunability of superconductivity in this three-dimensional correlated electronic system. This warrants further quantitative analysis of the interplay between lattice geometry, electronic correlations, and pairing symmetry.
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Gerguri et al. (2025) studied this question.
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