Vortex and disclination structures in a nematic-superconductor state

Abstract

The nematic-superconductor state is an example of a quantum liquid crystal that breaks gauge as well as rotation invariance. It was conjectured to exist in the pseudogap regime of the cuprates high $T_c$ superconductors. The nematic-superconductor state is characterized by two complex order parameters: one of them is related with superconductivity and the other one describes a nematic order. It supports two main classes of topological defects: half-vortices and disclinations. In this paper we present a Ginzburg-Landau approach to study the structure of these topological defects. Due to a geometrical coupling between the superconductor and the nematic order parameters, we show that vortices are strongly coupled with disclinations. We have found a restoring force between vortices and disclinations that produces harmonic excitations whose natural frequency depends on the geometrical coupling constant and the superconductor condensation energy. Moreover, in a regime with high density of defects, we have found a structural phase transition between vortex-disclination lattices with different symmetries.

16 pages, 8 figures, paper highly improved. Section IV rewritten. Appendix added. Several references added. Main results unchanged. Final version accepted for publication in Physical Review B

References in corpus (15)

• Theory of Intertwined Orders in High Temperature Superconductors
• Two-Dimensional Superconducting Fluctuations in Stripe-Ordered La(1.875)Ba(0.125)CuO(4)
• Striped superconductors: How the cuprates intertwine spin, charge and superconducting orders
• Detection of a Cooper-Pair Density Wave in Bi${}_2$Sr${}_2$CaCu${}_2$O${}_{8+x}$
• Dynamical layer decoupling in a stripe-ordered, high T_c superconductor
• Charge $4e$ superconductivity from pair density wave order in certain high temperature superconductors
• Appearance of fluctuating stripes at the onset of the pseudogap in the high-Tc Superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x
• Evidence for unusual superconducting correlations coexisting with stripe order in La(1.875)Ba(0.125)CuO(4)
• Theory of the striped superconductor
• Emergent phenomena in multicomponent superconductivity: an introduction to the focus issue
• Towards a two-dimensional superconducting state of La${}_{2-x}$Sr${}_x$CuO${}_2$ in a moderate external magnetic field
• Dissociation of vortex stacks into fractional-flux vortices
• Nematic quantum phase transition of composite Fermi liquids in half-filled Landau levels and their geometric response
• Phase transitions in superconductor liquid crystals
• Is the pseudogap a topological state?

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Two-dimensional Fermi liquid dynamics with density and quadrupolar interactions
• One-loop effective potential for two-dimensional competing scalar order parameters
• Quantum corrections for the phase diagram of systems with competing order
• On the existence of nematic-superconducting states in the Ginzburg-Landau regime
• Vortices in a Ginzburg Landau Theory of Superconductors with Nematic Order