Interplane and intraplane heat transport in quasi two-dimensional nodal superconductors

Abstract

We analyze the behavior of the thermal conductivity in quasi-two dimensional superconductors with line nodes. Motivated by measurements of the anisotropy between the interplane and intraplane thermal transport in CeIrIn_5 we show that a simple model of the open Fermi surface with vertical line nodes is insufficient to describe the data. We propose two possible extensions of the model taking into account a) additional modulation of the gap along the axial direction of the open Fermi surface; and b) dependence of the interplane tunneling on the direction of the in-plane momentum. We discuss the temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity anisotropy and its low T limit in these two models and compare the results with a model with a horizontal line of nodes (``hybrid gap''). We discuss possible relevance of each model for the symmetry of the order parameter in CeIrIn_5, and suggest further experiments aimed at clarifying the shape of the superconducting gap.

14pages, 12 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Field-Induced Quantum Critical Point in CeCoIn5
• Avoided Antiferromagnetic Order and Quantum Critical Point in CeCoIn${}_5$
• Field-angle Dependence of the Zero-Energy Density of States in the Unconventional Heavy-Fermion Superconductor CeCoIn5
• Unpaired Electrons in the Heavy-Fermion Superconductor CeCoIn_{5}
• Nodal structure of quasi-2D superconductors probed by magnetic field
• Two Superconducting Phases in CeRh_1-xIr_xIn_5
• Point-Contact Spectroscopy of the Heavy-Fermion Superconductor CeCoIn${}_5$
• Superconducting Gap Function in Antiferromagnetic Heavy-Fermion UPd_2Al_3 Probed by Angle Resolved Magnetothermal Transport Measurements

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Universal heat conduction in the iron-arsenide superconductor KFe2As2 : Evidence of a d-wave state
• From d-wave to s-wave pairing in the iron-pnictide superconductor (Ba,K)Fe2As2
• Thermal conductivity evidence for d_{x^2-y^2} pairing symmetry in the heavy-fermion CeIrIn5 superconductor
• Hybrid gap structure in the heavy-fermion superconductor CeIrIn${}_5$
• Superconducting gap structure of CeIrIn5 from field-angle-resolved measurements of its specific heat
• Field-angle-resolved anisotropy in superconducting CeCoIn5 using realistic Fermi surfaces
• Heat transport in nonuniform superconductors
• Sub-Phases in the Superconducting State of CeIrIn${}_5$ Revealed by Low Temperature $c$-axis Heat Transport
• Universal heat transport in a heavy-fermion superconductor