Influence of self-irradiation on the magnitude of the superfluid density in PuCoGa probed by muon spin rotation

Oishi, Kazuki; Heffner, R. H.; Ito, Takashi   ; Higemoto, Wataru  ; Morris, G. D.*; Bauer, E. D.*; Graf, M. J.*; Zhu, J.-X.*; Morales, L. A.*; Sarrao, J. L.*; Fluss, M. J.*; MacLaughlin, D. E.*; Shu, L.*

PuCoGa has attracted much interest because it is the first Pu-based superconductor, having an order of magnitude higher transition temperature K than the isostructural heavy fermion superconductor CeCoIn (K). The mechanism of the superconductivity in PuCoGa is still under investigation, though recent experiments and theory suggest a magnetic origin. A unique aspect of this compound is the self-irradiation damage because Pu (Pu, = 24,000 years) creates lattice defects which scatter electrons and, hence, break superconducting pairs. In order to elucidate the magnitude and temperature dependence of the magnetic penetration depth , we have performed SR measurements in the same PuCoGa single crystals after 25 and 400 days of aging. We found that decreased from 18.5K to 15K for the aged sample, yet a quasi-linear temperature dependence was found for the low-temperature in both the fresh and aged sample, consistent with -wave pairing symmetry. The magnitude of the muon spin relaxation rate in the aged sample, , where and are the superfluid density and the effective mass, respectively, is reduced by about 70% compared to fresh sample. This indicates that the scattering from self-irradiation induced defects is not in the limit of the conventional Abrikosov-Gor'kov pair-breaking theory, but rather in the limit of short coherence length (about 2nm in PuCoGa) superconductivity.