Magnetic f-Electron Mediated Cooper Pairing Mechanism in the Heavy Fermion Superconductor CeCoIn5
While magnetically mediated Cooper pairing is the conjectured
basis of heavy-fermion superconductivity, no direct verication exists.
In this talk, I will
demonstrate how one can use the heavy-fermion band structure derived
from quasiparticle
interference (QPI) imaging to determine the momentum-space structure of
the f-electron
magnetic interac- tions in the heavy fermion material CeCoIn
5.
Solving
the
superconducting gap equations on its two heavy-fermion bands with the
hypothesis that these
interactions mediate the Cooper pairing, yields a series of
quantitative predictions about the
superconductive state, such as the momentum structure of the
superconducting gap,
TC,
phase
sensitive QPI, the position of the magnetic resonance, and the
spin-pattice relaxation
rate. The agreement between these diverse predictions and the measured
characteristics of
superconducting CeCoIn
5 provides strong and direct evidence
that its
Cooper pairing is
mediated by the f-electron magnetism.