Spontaneous generation of fractional vortex-antivortex pairs at single edges of high-Tc superconductors

Abstract

Unconventional d-wave superconductors with pair-breaking edges are predicted to have ground states with spontaneously broken time-reversal and translational symmetries. We use the quasiclassical theory of superconductivity to demonstrate that such phases can exist at any single pair-breaking facet. This implies that a greater variety of systems, not necessarily mesoscopic in size, should be unstable to such symmetry breaking. The density of states averaged over the facet displays a broad peak centered at zero energy, which is consistent with experimental findings of a broad zero-bias conductance peak with a temperature-independent width at low temperatures.

arXiv commentAccepted for the Proceedings of LT28 - The 28th International Conference on Low Temperature Physics

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Spontaneously broken translational symmetry at edges of high-temperature superconductors: thermodynamics in magnetic field
• Breaking time-reversal and translational symmetry at edges of $d$-wave superconductors: microscopic theory and comparison with quasiclassical theory
• Spontaneous symmetry-breaking at surfaces of $d$-wave superconductors: influence of geometry and surface ruggedness
• Influence of diffuse surface scattering on the stability of superconducting phases with spontaneous surface current generated by Andreev bound states
• SuperConga: an open-source framework for mesoscopic superconductivity
• Tunnelling conductance of $d+ip$-wave superconductor
• Impurity strength-temperature phase diagram with phase crystals and competing time-reversal symmetry breaking states in nodal $d$-wave superconductors