Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy in the Superconducting State and Vortex Cores of the β-Pyrochlore KOs

We performed the first scanning tunneling spectroscopy measurements on the pyrochlore superconductor KOs2O6 (Tc=9.6 K) in both zero magnetic field and the vortex state at several temperatures above 1.95 K. This material presents atomically flat surfaces, yielding spatially homogeneous spectra which reveal fully gapped superconductivity with a gap anisotropy of 30%. Measurements performed at fields of 2 and 6 T display a hexagonal Abrikosov flux line lattice. From the shape of the vortex cores, we extract a coherence length of 31–40 Å, in agreement with the value derived from the upper critical field Hc2. We observe a reduction in size of the vortex cores (and hence the coherence length) with increasing field which is consistent with the unexpectedly high and unsaturated upper critical field reported. DUBOIS, Cédric, et al. Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy in the Superconducting State and Vortex Cores of the β-Pyrochlore KOs