Chiral superconductivity in UTe2 probed by anisotropic low-energy excitations

Abstract

Chiral spin-triplet superconductivity is a topologically nontrivial pairing state with broken time-reversal symmetry, which can host Majorana quasiparticles. The recently discovered heavy-fermion superconductor UTe$_2$ exhibits peculiar properties of spin-triplet pairing, and the possible chiral state has been actively discussed. However, the symmetry and nodal structure of its order parameter in the bulk, which determine the Majorana surface states, remains controversial. Here we focus on the number and positions of superconducting gap nodes in the ground state of UTe$_2$. Our magnetic penetration depth measurements for three field orientations in the Meissner state reveal the power-law temperature dependence with exponents nearly equal to 2 or less than 2, which excludes single-component spin-triplet states. The anisotropy of low-energy quasiparticle excitations indicates multiple point nodes near the $k_y$- and $k_z$-axes, evidencing that the order parameter has multiple components in a chiral complex form. We find that most consistent is a chiral $B_{3u}+iA_u$ non-unitary state, which provides fundamentals of the topological properties in UTe$_2$.