An unusual superconductor: In conventional, and in many unconventional, superconductors, the electrons that form Cooper pairs have spins pointing in opposite directions. An applied magnetic field can easily “break” such pairs—and destroy superconductivity—by aligning both spins in the same direction. In contrast, spin-triplet superconductors are much more resilient to magnetic fields. Very few candidates for such materials have been discovered. Ran et al. add to this select group by observing signatures of spin-triplet superconductivity, including a very large and anisotropic upper critical magnetic field, in the material UTe ₂ . Because spin-triplet superconductors may naturally exhibit topological superconductivity, this material may also be of interest in quantum computing. Science , this issue p. 684

In all known fermionic superfluids, Cooper pairs are composed of spin-1/2 quasi-particles that pair to form either spin-singlet or spin-triplet bound states. The “spin” of a Bloch electron, however, is fixed by the symmetries of the crystal and the atomic orbitals from which it is derived and, in some cases, can behave as if it were a spin-3/2 particle. The superconducting state of such a system allows pairing beyond spin-triplet, with higher spin quasi-particles combining to form quintet or septet pairs. We report evidence of unconventional superconductivity emerging from a spin-3/2 quasi-particle electronic structure in the half-Heusler semimetal YPtBi, a low-carrier density noncentrosymmetric cubic material with a high symmetry that preserves the p-like j = 3/2 manifold in the Bi-based Γ₈ band in the presence of strong spin-orbit coupling. With a striking linear temperature dependence of the London penetration depth, the existence of line nodes in the superconducting order parameter Δ is directly explained by a mixed-parity Cooper pairing model with high total angular momentum, consistent with a high-spin fermionic superfluid state. We propose a k ⋅ p model of the j = 3/2 fermions to explain how a dominant J = 3 septet pairing state is the simplest solution that naturally produces nodes in the mixed even-odd parity gap. Together with the underlying topologically nontrivial band structure, the unconventional pairing in this system represents a truly novel form of superfluidity that has strong potential for leading the development of a new series of topological superconductors.

Chiral superconductors have been proposed as one pathway to realize Majorana normal fluid at its boundary. However, the long-sought 2D and 3D chiral superconductors with edge and surface Majorana normal fluid are yet to be conclusively found. Here, we report evidence for a chiral spin-triplet pairing state of UTe₂ with surface normal fluid response. The microwave surface impedance of the UTe₂ crystal was measured and converted to complex conductivity, which is sensitive to both normal and superfluid responses. The anomalous residual normal fluid conductivity supports the presence of a significant normal fluid response. The superfluid conductivity follows the temperature behavior predicted for an axial spin-triplet state, which is further narrowed down to a chiral spin-triplet state with evidence of broken time-reversal symmetry. Further analysis excludes trivial origins for the observed normal fluid response. Our findings suggest that UTe₂ can be a new platform to study exotic topological excitations in higher dimension.

Electrical magnetoresistance and tunnel diode oscillator measurements were performed under external magnetic fields up to 41 T applied along the crystallographic b axis (hard axis) of UTe₂ as a function of temperature and applied pressures up to 18.8 kbar. In this work, we track the field-induced first-order transition between superconducting and magnetic field-polarized phases as a function of applied pressure, showing suppression of the transition with increasing pressure until the demise of superconductivity near 16 kbar and the appearance of a pressure-induced ferromagnetic-like ground state that is distinct from the field-polarized phase and stable at zero field. Together with evidence for the evolution of a second superconducting phase and its upper critical field with pressure, we examine the confinement of superconductivity by two orthogonal magnetic phases and the implications for understanding the boundaries of triplet superconductivity.

We investigated the occurrence and nature of superconductivity in single crystals of grown out of Sn flux by employing X-ray diffraction, electrical resistivity and specific heat measurements. We found that the residual resistivity ratio (RRR) of single crystals can be greatly improved, reaching as high as , by decanting the crystals from the molten Sn at and/or by annealing at temperatures between 550 and . We found that the samples with RRR 34 showed resistive signatures of superconductivity with the onset of the superconducting transition . RRR values vary between 35 and 65 with, on average, no systematic change in value, indicating that the systematic changes in RRR do not lead to comparable changes in . Specific heat measurements on samples that showed the clear resistive signatures of a superconducting transition did not show any signature of a superconducting phase transition, which suggests that the superconductivity observed in this compound is either some sort of filamentary, strain-stabilized superconductivity associated with small amounts of stressed (perhaps at twin boundaries or dislocations) or is a second crystallographic phase that is present at level below detection capability of conventional powder X-ray techniques.