Disorder-robust phase crystal in high-temperature superconductors stabilized by strong correlations

Abstract

The simultaneous interplay of strong electron-electron correlations, topological zero-energy states, and disorder is yet an unexplored territory but of immense interest due to their inevitable presence in many materials. Copper oxide high-temperature superconductors (cuprates) with pair breaking edges host a flat band of topological zero-energy states, making them an ideal playground where strong correlations, topology, and disorder are strongly intertwined. Here we show that this interplay in cuprates generates a new phase of matter: a fully gapped ``phase crystal" state that breaks both translational and time-reversal invariance, characterized by a modulation of the $d$-wave superconducting phase co-existing with a modulating extended $s$-wave superconducting order. In contrast to conventional wisdom, we find that this phase crystal state is remarkably robust to omnipresent disorder, but only in the presence of strong correlations, thus giving a clear route to its experimental realization.

Added discussion and analysis on comparison with experiments

References in corpus (8)

• Quantum phases driven by strong correlations
• Self-doped Mott insulator for parent compounds of nickelate superconductors
• Linear Response Theory and the Universal Nature of the Magnetic Excitation Spectrum of the Cuprates
• Broken translational and time-reversal symmetry in superconducting films
• Grand canonical Gutzwiller approximation for magnetic inhomogeneous systems
• Extended Gutzwiller Approximation for Inhomogeneous System
• Topological superconductivity in the extended Kitaev-Heisenberg model
• From immunity to sudden death: Effects of strong disorder in strongly correlated superconductors

Cited by in corpus (9)

• SuperConga: an open-source framework for mesoscopic superconductivity
• Interaction-driven first-order and higher-order topological superconductivity
• A finite element method for the quasiclassical theory of superconductivity
• Disorder-dependent superconducting pairing symmetry in doped graphene
• Enhanced chiral edge currents and orbital magnetic moment in chiral $d$-wave superconductors from mesoscopic finite-size effects
• Mixed higher-order topology and nodal and nodeless flat band topological phases in a superconducting multiorbital model
• Impurity strength-temperature phase diagram with phase crystals and competing time-reversal symmetry breaking states in nodal $d$-wave superconductors
• 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