Strong surface contribution to the Nonlinear Meissner Effect

Abstract

We demonstrate that in a d-wave superconductor the bulk nonlinear Meissner effect is dominated by a surface effect due to Andreev bound states at low temperatures. The contribution of this surface effect to the nonlinear response coefficient follows a 1/T^3 law with opposite sign compared to the bulk 1/T behavior. The cross-over from bulk dominated behavior to surface dominated behavior occurs at a temperature of T/T_c ~ 1/sqrt(kappa). We present an approximate analytical calculation, which supports our numerical calculations and provides a qualitative understanding of the effect. The effect can be probed by intermodulation distortion experiments.

4 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Effect of Surface Andreev Bound States on the Bean-Livingston Barrier in d-Wave Superconductors
• Modification of Born impurity scattering near the surface of d-wave superconductors and influence of external magnetic field