Spectroscopic evidence for a first-order transition to a possible orbital Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov state
. The transition manifests itself as a sudden enhancement of the superconducting gap with prominent hysteresis by sweeping the in-plane magnetic field well below the upper critical field. Such a first-order transition quickly disappears once the magnetic field tilts away from the in-plane direction by about one degree, and it depends sensitively on disorder. Furthermore, we obtain a comprehensive phase diagram of the phase transition as a function of magnetic field, temperature, and the sample thickness. These observed behaviors can be reproduced by the theory that considers the energetics between a uniform Ising superconductor and the orb-FFLO state.
Authors
- Alberto F. Morpurgo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0974-3620)
- Menghan Liao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9108-3013)
- Zongzheng Cao
- Liguo Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9371-8123)
- Kenji Watanabe (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3701-8119)
- Qi-Kun Xue (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4129-1284)
- Haiwen Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0007-3117)
- Ding Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8334-8349)
- Yuying Zhu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2968-3146)
- Takashi Taniguchi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1467-3105)
- Hongyi Yan
Institutions
- University of Geneva (CH)
- National Institute for Materials Science (JP)
- Beijing Normal University (CN)
- Southern University of Science and Technology (CN)
- Hefei University (CN)
- Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences (CN)
- Tsinghua University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2026-05-12
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-72134-z
- Primary Topic
- Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China