Spontaneously broken time-reversal symmetry in high-temperature superconductors

Abstract

Conventional superconductors are strong diamagnets that through the Meissner effect expel magnetic fields. It would therefore be surprising if a superconducting ground state would support spontaneous magnetics fields. Such time-reversal symmetry broken states have been proposed for the high-temperature superconductors, but their identification remains experimentally controversial. Here we show a route to a low-temperature superconducting state with broken time-reversal symmetry that may accommodate currently conflicting experiments. This state is characterised by an unusual vortex pattern in the form of a necklace of fractional vortices around the perimeter of the material, where neighbouring vortices have opposite current circulation. This vortex pattern is a result of a spectral rearrangement of current carrying states near the surfaces.

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Cited by in corpus (40)

• Unconventional Superconductivity
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• Unconventional superconductivity in the cage type compound Sc${}_5$Rh${}_6$Sn${}_{18}$
• Spontaneously broken translational symmetry at edges of high-temperature superconductors: thermodynamics in magnetic field
• Spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking by disorder in superconductors
• Real-space probing of the local magnetic response of thin-film superconductors using single spin magnetometry
• Quasiclassical expressions for the free energy of superconducting systems
• Phase transitions in superconductor/ferromagnet bilayer driven by spontaneous supercurrents
• Quasiclassical theory of charge transport across mesoscopic normal metal-superconducting heterostructures with current conservation
• Andreev Bound States in Superconducting Films and Confined Superfluid He-3
• Disorder-robust phase crystal in high-temperature superconductors stabilized by strong correlations
• Phase Crystals
• Majorana bound states in magnetic impurity chains: effects of $d$-wave pairing
• Breaking time-reversal and translational symmetry at edges of $d$-wave superconductors: microscopic theory and comparison with quasiclassical theory
• Nanoscale Probing of Broken-Symmetry States in Graphene Induced by Individual Atomic Impurities
• Symmetry conditions of a nodal superconductor for generating robust flat-band Andreev bound states at its dirty surface
• Spontaneous symmetry-breaking at surfaces of $d$-wave superconductors: influence of geometry and surface ruggedness
• Time-reversal symmetry breaking and gapped surface states due to spontaneous emergence of new order in $d$-wave nanoislands
• Robust and tunable coreless vortices and fractional vortices in chiral $d$-wave superconductors
• Influence of diffuse surface scattering on the stability of superconducting phases with spontaneous surface current generated by Andreev bound states
• Emergence of $d\pm ip$-wave superconducting state at the edge of $d$-wave superconductors mediated by Andreev-bound-state-driven ferromagnetic fluctuations
• SuperConga: an open-source framework for mesoscopic superconductivity
• Spontaneous generation of fractional vortex-antivortex pairs at single edges of high-Tc superconductors
• Interaction-driven first-order and higher-order topological superconductivity
• A finite element method for the quasiclassical theory of superconductivity
• Tunnelling conductance of $d+ip$-wave superconductor
• Enhanced chiral edge currents and orbital magnetic moment in chiral $d$-wave superconductors from mesoscopic finite-size effects
• Surface scattering effect and the stripe order in films of the superfluid ${}^3$He B phase
• Odd frequency pairing in a quantum critical metal
• Ginzburg-Landau Theory for Flux Phase and Superconductivity in $t-J$ Model
• Sparse modeling approach for quasiclassical theory of superconductivity
• Spontaneous Magnetic Field near a Time-Reversal Symmetry Broken Surface State of YBCO
• Time-reversal symmetry breaking phase and gapped surface states in d-wave nanoscale superconductors
• Impurity strength-temperature phase diagram with phase crystals and competing time-reversal symmetry breaking states in nodal $d$-wave superconductors
• Chiral Current Inversion Induced by Flat-Band Andreev Bound States
• Spontaneous Magnetic Field and Local Density of States near a Time-Reversal Symmetry Broken Surface State of YBCO
• Perspectives on Magnetic/Superconductor Hybrid Systems: Long-range Electromagnetic Phenomena Induced by Proximity Effect and Interfacial Spin-orbit Coupling
• Strengthened correlations near [110] edges of $d$-wave superconductors in the t-J model with the Gutzwiller approximation
• Self-consistent theory of current injection into $d$ and $d+is$ superconductors