We present very low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) experiments on single-crystalline samples of the superconductor β-Bi 2 Pd. We find a single superconducting gap from the zero-field tunneling conductance. However, the magnetic field dependence of the intervortex tunneling conductance is higher than the one expected in a single-gap superconductor. Such an increase in the intervortex tunneling conductance has been found in superconductors with multiple superconducting gaps. We also find that the hexagonal vortex lattice is locked to the square atomic lattice as expected in crystalline superconductors with anisotropic Fermi surfaces. Moreover, we compare the upper critical field H c2 (T ) obtained in our sample with previous measurements and find that H c2 (T ) does not increase by reducing the mean free path. We fit H c2 (T ) and show that multiband Fermi surface is needed to explain the observed behavior. We propose that β-Bi 2 Pd is a single-gap multiband superconductor. We anticipate that single-gap superconductivity might often occur in compounds with anisotropic multiband Fermi surfaces.

We report on the structural, electronic and magnetic properties of a monolayer of GdAg, forming a moiré pattern on Ag(111). Combining scanning tunneling microscopy and ab initio spin-polarized calculations, we show that the electronic band structure can be shifted linearly via thermal controlled strain of the intra-layer atomic distance in the range of 1-7%, leading to lateral hetero-structuring. Furthermore, the coupling of the incommensurable GdAg alloy layer to the Ag(111) substrate leads to spatially varying atomic relaxation causing subsurface layer buckling, texturing of the electronic and spin properties, and inhomogeneity of the magnetic anisotropy energy across the layer. These results provide perspectives for control of electronic properties and magnetic ordering in atomically-thin layers.