A phenomenology for multiple phases in the heavy fermion skutterudite superconductor PrOs4Sb12

Abstract

The two superconducting phases recently discovered in skutterudite PrOs4Sb12 are discussed by using the phenomenological Ginzburg-Landau theory in the cubic (tetrahedral) crystal symmetry T_h. Building on experimental imput coming from the recent thermal conductivity measurements, the structure of the gap functions for these two phases are considered for the spin singlet pairing case. One of the phases lying in the high temperature and high field region (the A phase) is a strongly "anisotropic s-wave" state and another phase (the B phase) is "anisotropic s"+ i d-wave state. The B phase breaks cubic crystal symmetry and time reversal symmetry spontaneously. The cubic symmetry breaking in B-phase causes anomalous crystal strain and it could be seen in the anisotropy of thermal expansions and isothermal elastic constants. As a signal of the time reversal symmetry breaking, it is expected that an internal spontaneous magnetization should be observed by the MuSR measurement.

7 pages, 1 figure, Minor corrections. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. B

References in corpus (2)

• Multiple Superconducting Phases in New Heavy Fermion Superconductor PrOs4Sb12
• Evidence for Unconventional Strong-coupling Superconductivity in PrOs_4Sb_12 : An Sb Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance (NQR) Study

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• Transport of Charge and Spin in the Weak Link between Misoriented $PrO{s}_{4}S{b}_{12}$ Superconductors
• Microscopic theories for cubic and tetrahedral superconductors: application to PrOs_4Sb_{12}
• Time-reversal symmetry violation and the structure of Superconducting Order Parameter of PrOs${}_4$Sb${}_{12}$
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