Absence of a bulk thermodynamic phase transition to a density wave phase in <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>UTe</mml:mi> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:msub> </mml:math>
Florian Theuss, Avi Shragai, G. Grissonnanche, Luciano B. Peralta, Gregorio de la Fuente Simarro, Ian Hayes, Shanta Saha, Yun Suk Eo, Alonso Suarez, Andrea Capa Salinas, Ganesh Pokharel, Stephen D. Wilson, Nicholas P. Butch, Johnpierre Paglione, B. J. Ramshaw
Abstract
Superconductors often host multiple competing and intertwined orders, such as spin and charge density waves. Recent scanning tunneling microscopy measurements suggest that the heavy-fermion superconductor UTe${}_{2}$ has both Cooper pair and charge density waves (PDWs and CDWs, respectively). Using high-resolution resonant ultrasound spectroscopy, the authors find here no evidence for a thermodynamic phase transition to a bulk CDW state, also ruling out a bulk PDW. These measurements highlight the need to distinguish between bulk and surface physics in UTe${}_{2}$.