Superconductivity at an antiferromagnetic quantum critical point: Role of energy fluctuations

Motivated by recent experiments reporting superconductivity only at very low temperature in a class of heavy fermion compounds, we study the impact of energy fluctuations with small momentum transfer on the pairing instability near an antiferromagnetic quantum critical point. While these fluctuations, formed by composite spin fluctuations, were proposed to explain the thermodynamic and transport properties near the quantum critical point of compounds such as YbRh2Si2 and CeCu6-xAux at x≈0.1, here they are found to strongly suppress Tc of the d-wave pairing of the hot quasiparticles promoted by the spin fluctuations. Interestingly, if energy fluctuations are strong enough, they can induce triplet pairing involving the quasiparticles of the cold regions of the Fermi surface. Overall, the opposing effects of energy and spin fluctuations lead to a suppression of Tc.