Pair breaking in multi-orbital superconductors: an application to oxide interfaces

Abstract

We investigate the impact of impurity scattering on superconductivity in an anisotropic multi-orbital model with spin-orbit coupling which describes the electron fluid at two-dimensional oxide interfaces. As the pairing mechanism is under debate, both conventional and unconventional superconducting states are analyzed. We consider magnetic and nonmagnetic spin-dependent intra- and interorbital scattering and discuss possible microscopic realizations leading to these processes. It is found that, for magnetic disorder, the unconventional superconductor is protected against interband scattering and, thus, more robust than the conventional condensate. In case of nonmagnetic impurities, the conventional superconductor is protected as expected from the Anderson theorem and the critical scattering rate of the unconventional state is enhanced by a factor of four due to the spin-orbit coupling and anisotropic masses in oxide interfaces.

15 pages, 5 figures

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• Theory of spin-orbit coupling at LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interfaces and SrTiO3 surfaces
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• Oxygen vacancies at titanate interfaces: two-dimensional magnetism and orbital reconstruction
• Topological superconductivity and unconventional pairing in oxide interfaces
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Cited by in corpus (18)

• Discovery of two-dimensional anisotropic superconductivity at KTaO${}_3$ (111) interfaces
• Two-dimensional superconductivity at the surfaces of KTaO3 gated with ionic liquid
• Unconventional multi-band superconductivity in bulk SrTiO${}_3$ and LaAlO${}_3$/SrTiO${}_3$ interfaces
• Generalized Anderson's theorem for superconductors derived from topological insulators
• Eliashberg equations for an electron-phonon version of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model: Pair Breaking in non-Fermi liquid superconductors
• Time-reversal-symmetry breaking and unconventional pairing in the noncentrosymmetric superconductor La${}_7$Rh${}_3$
• Electron irradiation effects on superconductivity in PdTe${}_2$: an application of a generalized Anderson theorem
• Mechanism, time-reversal symmetry and topology of superconductivity in noncentrosymmetric systems
• Time-reversal symmetry breaking and multigap superconductivity in the noncentrosymmetric superconductor La${}_7$Ni${}_3$
• Robustness of unconventional $s$-wave superconducting states against disorder
• General theory of robustness against disorder in multi-band superconductors
• Friedel oscillations and Majorana zero modes in inhomogeneous superconductors
• Possible unconventional pairing in $(\text{Ca,Sr}{)}_3(\text{Ir,Rh}{)}_4{\text{Sn}}_{13}$ superconductors revealed by controlling disorder
• Robustness of quantum critical pairing against disorder
• Impact of disorder on the superconducting transition temperature near a Lifshitz transition
• Temperature-dependent $s_{\pm }\leftrightarrow s_{++}$ transitions in the multiband model for Fe-based superconductors with impurities
• Time-reversal-symmetry Breaking in the Superconducting State of ScS
• Decisive proofs of the $s_{\pm }\to s_{++}$ transition in the temperature dependence of the magnetic penetration depth