Competition between electron pairing and phase coherence in superconducting interfaces
The large diversity of exotic electronic phases displayed by two-dimensional superconductors confronts physicists with new challenges. These include the recently discovered quantum Griffith singularity in atomic Ga films, topological phases in proximized topological insulators and unconventional Ising pairing in transition metal dichalcogenide layers. In LaAlO3/SrTiO3 heterostructures, a gate tunable superconducting electron gas is confined in a quantum well at the interface between two insulating oxides. Remarkably, the gas coexists with both magnetism and strong Rashba spin-orbit coupling and is a candidate system for the creation of Majorana fermions. However, both the origin of superconductivity and the nature of the transition to the normal state over the whole doping range remain elusive. Missing such crucial information impedes harnessing this outstanding system for future superconducting electronics and topological quantum computing. Here we show that the superconducting phase diagram of LaAlO3/SrTiO3 is controlled by the competition between electron pairing and phase coherence. Through resonant microwave experiments, we measure the superfluid stiffness and infer the gap energy as a function of carrier density. Whereas a good agreement with the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory is observed at high carrier doping, we find that the suppression of Tc at low doping is controlled by the loss of macroscopic phase coherence instead of electron pairing as in standard BCS theory. We find that only a very small fraction of the electrons condenses into the superconducting state and propose that this corresponds to the weak filling of a high-energy dxz/yz band, more apt to host superconductivity