Coherent Superconductivity with a Large Gap Ratio from Incoherent Metals
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Updated: Feb 2, 2026

Comparison of Two Different Synthesis Methods of Single Crystals of Superconducting Uranium Ditelluride
Published on: July 8, 2021
Aavishkar A Patel1,2, Michael J Lawler3,4, Eun-Ah Kim3
1Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
Abstract:
A mysterious incoherent metallic (IM) normal state with T-linear resistivity is ubiquitous among strongly correlated superconductors. Recent progress with microscopic models exhibiting IM transport has presented the opportunity for us to study new models that exhibit direct transitions into a superconducting state out of IM states within the framework of connected Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev "quantum dots." Here, local Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev interactions within a dot produce IM transport in the normal state, while local attractive interactions drive superconductivity. Through explicit calculations, we find two features of superconductivity arising from an IM normal state. First, despite the absence of quasiparticles in the normal state, the superconducting state still exhibits coherent superfluid transport. Second, the nonquasiparticle nature of the IM Green's functions produces a large enhancement in the ratio of the zero-temperature superconducting gap Δ and transition temperature T_{SC}, 2Δ/T_{SC}, with respect to its BCS value of 3.53.
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