Microscopic evidence for a chiral superconducting order parameter in the heavy fermion superconductor UTe2

Understand

Spin-triplet superconductivity is a condensate of electron pairs with spin-1 and an odd-parity wavefunction.

• A particularly interesting manifestation of triplet pairing is a chiral p-wave state which is topologically non-trivial and a natural platform for realizing Majorana edge modes.
• Triplet pairing is however rare in solid state systems and so far, no unambiguous identification has been made in any bulk compound.
• Since pairing is most naturally mediated by ferromagnetic spin fluctuations, uranium based heavy fermion systems containing f electron elements that can harbor both strong correlations and magnetism are considered ideal candidate spin-triplet superconductors.