NMR Study of the Superconducting Gap Variation near the Mott Transition in Cs3C60

Abstract

Former extensive studies of superconductivity in the A3C60 compounds, where A is an alkali metal, have led one to consider that Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer electron-phonon pairing prevails in those compounds, though the incidence of electronic Coulomb repulsion has been highly debated. The discovery of two isomeric fulleride compounds Cs3C60 which exhibit a transition with pressure from a Mott insulator (MI) to a superconducting (SC) state clearly reopens that question. Using pressure (p) as a single control parameter of the C60 balls lattice spacing, one can now study the progressive evolution of the SC properties when the electronic correlations are increased towards the critical pressure pc of the Mott transition. We have used C13 and Cs133 NMR measurements on the cubic phase A15-Cs3C60 just above pc=5.0(3) kbar, where the SC transition temperature Tc displays a dome shape with decreasing cell volume. From the T dependence below Tc of the nuclear spin lattice relaxation rate (T1)−1 we determine the electronic excitations in the SC state, that is 2Δ, the gap value. The latter is found to be largely enhanced with respect to the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer value established in the case of dense A3C60 compounds. It even increases slightly with decreasing p towards pc, where Tc decreases on the SC dome, so that 2Δ/kBTc increases regularly upon approaching the Mott transition. These results bring clear evidence that the increasing correlations near the Mott transition are not significantly detrimental to superconductivity. They rather suggest that repulsive electron interactions might even reinforce elecron-phonon superconductivity, being then partly responsible for the large Tc values, as proposed by theoretical models taking the electronic correlations as a key ingredient.

Source-reported materials — not catalogue approval

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