Inhomogeneous phase stiffness in two-dimensional $s$-wave disordered superconductors

Abstract

We investigate the effect of white-noise disorder on the local phase stiffness and thermodynamic properties of a two-dimensional $s$-wave superconductor. Starting from a local attractive model and using path-integral formalism, we derive an effective action by decoupling the superconducting order parameter into amplitude and phase components in a gauge-invariant manner. Perturbative techniques are applied to the phase fluctuation sector to derive an effective phase-only XY model for disordered superconducting systems. Solving the saddle-point Green's function using Bogoliubov-de Gennes theory, we calculate the distributions of nearest-neighbor couplings for various disorder strengths. A single-peak distribution is observed for low disorder strength, which becomes bimodal with one peak at negative couplings as the disorder strength increases. The local phase stiffness remains randomly distributed throughout the lattice and shows no correlation with pairing amplitudes. The temperature dependence of the superfluid stiffness ($J_s$) is studied using Monte Carlo simulations. At strong disorder and low temperatures, $J_s$ increases with increasing temperature, exhibiting anomalous behavior that may indicate the onset of a glassy transition. Additionally, calculations of the Edwards-Anderson order parameter in this disorder regime suggest the emergence of a $phase$-$glass$ state at very low temperatures.

12 pages, 6 figures

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