Junior Research Fellow Dr. Alex Eaton with PhD students Theo Weinberger and Zheyu Wu have made rapid progress in their investigation of the new unconventional superconductor UTe2: in three papers submitted in quick succession to high-profile journals, they present
- a convincing model for the Fermi surface geometry in UTe2 based on their recent quantum oscillation measurements
- a re-evaluation of the field-temperature phase diagram of UTe2 in the new, ultra-pure generation of single crystals that underly all this work, produced by close collaborators at Charles University, Prague
- the observation and detailed interpretation of quantum interference oscillations in UTe2 that are found in transport experiments at very high fields
More is under way, with another high field expedition coming up shortly. UTe2 is a particularly interesting material to study, because it exhibits at least four distinct superconducting states, between which it can be switched by varying field, pressure or temperature, some of these states are resilient to very high applied fields, reaching nearly 70 T for some directions, indicating triplet pairing, it has a surprisingly simple Fermi surface geometry, and super-clean crystals have recently become available.