Reduction of the 17O Knight Shift in the Superconducting State and the Heat-up Effect by NMR Pulses on Sr2RuO4

Abstract

Quite recently, a pronounced drop of O-17 NMR Knight shift in the superconducting (SC) state of an unstrained Sr2RuO4 was reported by Pustogow and Luo et al. They revealed such behavior from the free-induction decay (FID) signal after a weak RF pulse. We examined this behavior with our single-crystalline Sr2RuO4, and reproduced their result: the peaks of the O-17-NMR spectra shift in the SC state as long as the RF-pulse power is smaller than a threshold. Furthermore, we measured the temperature variation of the Knight shift by a standard spin-echo method with small-power RF pulses, and found that the spin susceptibility decreases in the SC state. We conclude that the previous results of the invariance of the Knight shift in the SC state were due to instantaneous destruction of superconductivity by the RF pulses. The heat-up effect was characterized by the temperature variation of the Knight shift under various measurement conditions.