Surface State Tunneling Signatures in the Two-Component Superconductor UPt_{3}

Area of Science:

• Condensed Matter Physics
• Superconductivity Research
• Materials Science

Background:

• Quasiparticle interference (QPI) imaging is vital for studying Bogoliubov excitations in unconventional superconductors.
• It's crucial for determining superconducting gap and symmetry in quasi-2D systems.

Purpose of the Study:

• Extend QPI imaging to three-dimensional (3D) superconductors.
• Analyze the QPI spectrum of the heavy-fermion superconductor UPt3.
• Resolve the controversial superconducting gap structure of UPt3.

Main Methods:

• Developed a slab calculation method for 3D superconductors.
• Incorporated 3D electronic structure and proposed chiral gap models (E1g,u or E2u).
• Analyzed extended bulk states and topologically protected surface states.

Main Results:

• Predicted QPI spectrum for UPt3 based on different gap models.
• Identified unique fingerprints: number of Weyl arcs and their hybridization with line nodes.
• Demonstrated the potential to distinguish between proposed nodal structures.

Conclusions:

• The extended QPI method offers a pathway to definitively determine the nodal structure of 3D superconductors.
• Weyl arc features in the QPI spectrum are key identifiers for UPt3's gap structure.
• This technique advances the understanding of complex superconducting materials.