Heat capacity of type I superconductivity in the Dirac semimetal PdTe${}_2$

Abstract

Type I superconductivity has recently been reported for the Dirac semimetal PdTe${}_2$ (Tc approximately 1.6K) with, remarkably, multiple critical fields and a complex phase diagram. Here, measurements of the specific heat utilizing a thermal relaxation technique are presented. Conventional weak-coupling BCS superconductivity is confirmed by examining the temperature dependence of the specific heat in zero field. By probing the latent heat accompanying the superconducting transition, thermodynamic evidence for type I superconductivity is attained. The presence of the intermediate state is observed as a significant broadening of the superconducting transition onto lower temperatures at high fields as well as irreversibility in the specific heat in zero field cooled data at 8.5 mT.

6 pages, 4 figures and Supplemental Material

References in corpus (6)

• Type-II Dirac fermions in the PtSe${}_2$ class of transition metal dichalcogenides
• Type I superconductivity in the Dirac semimetal PdTe2
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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Superconducting and structural properties of the type-I superconductor PdTe2 under high pressure