Pair breaking by nonmagnetic impurities in the noncentrosymmetric superconductor CePt3Si

Abstract

We have studied the effect of Ge substitution and pressure on the heavy-fermion superconductor CePt3Si. Ge substitution on the Si site acts as negative chemical pressure leading to an increase in the unit-cell volume but also introduces chemical disorder. We carried out electrical resistivity and ac heat-capacity experiments under hydrostatic pressure on CePt3Si1-xGex (x=0, 0.06). Our experiments show that the suppression of superconductivity in CePt3Si1-xGex is mainly caused by the scattering potential, rather than volume expansion, introduced by the Ge dopants. The antiferromagnetic order is essentially not affected by the chemical disorder.