Suppression of spontaneous currents in Sr${}_2$RuO${}_4$ by surface disorder

Abstract

A major challenge to the chiral $p$-wave hypothesis for the pairing symmetry of the unconventional superconductor Sr${}_2$RuO${}_4$ is the null result of sensitive scanning magnetometry experiments designed to detect the expected spontaneous charge currents. Motivated by junction tunneling conductance measurements which indicate the quenching of superconductivity at the surfaces of even high-purity samples, we examine the spontaneous currents in a chiral $p$-wave superconductor near a normal metal / superconductor interface using the lattice Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations and Ginzburg-Landau theory, and find that the edge current is suppressed by more than an order of magnitude compared to previous estimates. These calculations demonstrate that interface details can have a quantitatively meaningful effect on the expectations for magnetometry experiments.

References in corpus (6)

• High Resolution Polar Kerr Effect Measurements of Sr2RuO4: Evidence for Broken Time Reversal Symmetry in the Superconducting State
• Observation of half-height magnetization steps in Sr2RuO4
• Hidden quasi one-dimensional superconductivity in Sr${}_2$RuO${}_4$
• Surface States, Edge Currents and the Angular Momentum of Chiral p-wave Superfluids
• Properties of edge states in spin-triplet two-band superconductor
• Suppression of Spontaneous Supercurrents in a Chiral p-Wave Superconductor

Cited by in corpus (15)

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• Vanishing edge currents in non-$p$-wave topological chiral superconductors
• Non-topological nature of the edge current in a chiral p-wave superconductor
• Current inversion at the edges of a chiral $\mathbf{p}$-wave superconductor
• Enhanced superconductivity at the interface of W/Sr${}_2$RuO${}_4$ point contact
• Possibility of mixed helical p-wave pairings in Sr${}_2$RuO${}_4$
• Degeneracy between even- and odd-parity superconductivity in the quasi-1D Hubbard model and implications for Sr2RuO4
• Robustness of chiral surface current and subdominant $s$-wave Cooper pairs
• Interband interference effects at the edge of a multiband chiral p-wave superconductor
• Even odder after twenty-three years: the superconducting order parameter puzzle of Sr2RuO4
• Laser pulse probe of chirality of Cooper pairs
• Disorder-induced currents as signatures of chiral superconductivity
• Examining the possibility of chiral superconductivity in Sr${}_2$RuO${}_4$ and other compounds via applied supercurrent
• Chiral Current Inversion Induced by Flat-Band Andreev Bound States
• Vortex structure in p-wave superconductors