Electron irradiation reveals robust fully gapped superconductivity in LaNiGa2

The effects of 2.5-MeV electron irradiation were studied in the superconducting phase of single crystals of LaNiGa2, using measurements of electrical transport and radio-frequency magnetic susceptibility. The London penetration depth is found to vary exponentially with temperature, suggesting a fully gapped Fermi surface. The inferred superfluid density is close to that of a single-gap weak-coupling isotropic s-wave superconductor. Superconductivity is extremely robust against nonmagnetic point-like disorder induced by electron irradiation. Our results place strong constraints on the previously proposed triplet pairing state by requiring fine-tuned impurity scattering amplitudes and are most naturally explained by a sign-preserving, weak-coupling, and approximately momentum-independent singlet superconducting state in LaNiGa2, which does not break time-reversal symmetry. We discuss how our findings could be reconciled with previous measurements that indicated magnetic signatures in the superconducting phase.