Electronic states near a quantum fluctuating point vortex in a d-wave superconductor: Dirac fermion theory

Abstract

We introduce a simple model of the low energy electronic states in the vicinity of a vortex undergoing quantum zero-point motion in a d-wave superconductor. The vortex is treated as a point flux tube, carrying pi-flux of an auxiliary U(1) gauge field, which executes simple harmonic motion in a pinning potential. The nodal Bogoliubov quasiparticles are represented by Dirac fermions with unit U(1) gauge charge. The energy dependence of the local density of electronic states (LDOS) at the vortex center has no zero bias peak; instead, small satellite features appear, driven by transitions between different vortex eigenmodes. These results are qualitatively consistent with scanning tunneling microscopy measurements of the sub-gap LDOS in cuprate superconductors. Furthermore, as argued in L. Balents et al., Phys.Rev.B 71, 144508 (2005), the zero-point vortex motion also leads naturally to the observed periodic modulations in the spatial dependence of the sub-gap LDOS.

17 pages, 12 figures; a new appendix is added (material taken from cond-mat/0604105)

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Splitting of Majorana modes due to intervortex tunneling in a p + ip superconductor
• Restoration of the magnetic hc/e-periodicity in unconventional superconductors
• Observation of vortices and hidden pseudogap from scanning tunneling spectroscopic studies of electron-doped cuprate superconductor $S{r}_{0.9}L{a}_{0.1}Cu{O}_2$
• s-wave Cooper pair insulators and theory of correlated superconductors
• Noncommutativity and nonassociativity of closed bosonic string on T-dual toroidal backgrounds
• Enigma of the vortex state in a strongly correlated d-wave superconductor
• Magnification of signatures of topological phase transition by quantum zero point motion
• Influence of the quantum zero-point motion of a vortex on the electronic spectra of s-wave superconductors
• Vortex structure in a $d$-wave superconductor obtained by a confinement transition from the pseudogap metal
• Geometric phases of d-wave vortices in a model of lattice fermions