Spin-orbit scattering in d-wave superconductors

Abstract

When non-magnetic impurities are introduced in a d-wave superconductor, both thermodynamic and spectral properties are strongly affected if the impurity potential is close to the strong resonance limit. In addition to the scalar impurity potential, the charge carriers are also spin-orbit coupled to the impurities. Here it is shown that (i) close to the unitarity limit for the impurity scattering, the spin-orbit contribution is of the same order of magnitude than the scalar scattering and cannot be neglected, (ii) the spin-orbit scattering is pair-breaking and (iii) induces a small id_xy component to the off-diagonal part of the self-energy.

9 pages, 3 postscript figures, euromacr.tex-europhys.sty, submitted to Europhysics Letters

References in corpus (3)

• Response of a $d_{x^2-y^2}$ Superconductor to a Zeeman Magnetic Field
• Scattering by impurity-induced order parameter ``holes'' in d-wave superconductors
• Effect of spatial variations of superconducting gap on suppression of the transition temperature by impurities

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Absence of a Proximity Effect in a Topological Insulator on a Cuprate Superconductor: Bi2Se3/Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8
• Zeeman effects on the impurity-induced resonances in d-wave superconductors
• Zeeman response of d-wave superconductors: Born approximation for impurity and spin-orbit scattering potentials
• Unitary Limit of Spin-orbit scattering in two-dimensional s- and d-wave superconductors