Heat conduction in the heavy fermion superconductor UPd2Al3

Abstract We present preliminary measurements of the thermal conductivity of the heavy fermion superconductor UPd 2 Al 3 for the normal and superconducting states at low temperatures. As T → 0, the superconducting state is characterized by a finite linear term, about 10% of the normal state value, which suggests a residual density of low-energy quasiparticle states. This agrees qualitatively with resonant impurity scattering theories applied to exotic superconductors with nodes in the gap structure. Comparisons are made with theory and with other U-based superconductors, such as URu 2 Si 2 and UPt 3 .