New paper: Dirac Surface States and Nature of Superconductivity in Noncentrosymmetric BiPd

Superconducoverimage3ctivity in non-centrosymmetric material promises to be unconventional, the lack of spatial inversion symmetry allows for a triplet component of the order parameter. For various non-centrosymmetric materials, evidence for a triplet component of the order parameter has been put forward.
In this paper, we show that in BiPd superconductivity looks much more conventional when zooming in to the atomic scale by ultra-low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). What’s more, STM results are consistent with macroscopic characterization by specific heat, whereas electric transport measurements are not – suggesting that electric transport detects signatures from defects in the material rather than being representative of bulk behaviour.
Our measurements further show signatures of Dirac surface states, confirmed by relativistic ab-initio calculations.

Read the full paper at

  • Z. Sun, M. Enayat, A. Maldonado, C. Lithgow, E. Yelland, D.C. Peets, A. Yaresko, A.P. Schnyder and P. Wahl, Dirac Surface States and Nature of Superconductivity in Noncentrosymmetric BiPd, Nat. Commun. 6, 6633 (2015) (open), arxiv/1407.5667.