English

Impurity bound states in fully gapped $d$-wave superconductors with subdominant order parameters

Superconductivity 2019-01-14 v1 Strongly Correlated Electrons Quantum Physics

Abstract

Impurities in superconductors and their induced bound states are important both for engineering novel states such as Majorana zero-energy modes and for probing bulk properties of the superconducting state. The high-temperature cuprates offer a clear advantage in a much larger superconducting order parameter, but the nodal energy spectrum of a pure dd-wave superconductor only allows virtual bound states. Fully gapped dd-wave superconducting states have however been proposed in several cuprate systems thanks to subdominant order parameters producing d+isd+is- or d+idd+id'-wave superconducting states. Here we study both magnetic and potential impurities in these fully gapped dd-wave superconductors. Using analytical T-matrix and complementary numerical tight-binding lattice calculations, we show that magnetic and potential impurities behave fundamentally different in d+isd+is- and d+idd+id'-wave superconductors. In a d+isd+is-wave superconductor, there are no bound states for potential impurities, while a magnetic impurity produces one pair of bound states, with a zero-energy level crossing at a finite scattering strength. On the other hand, a d+idd+id'-wave symmetry always give rise to two pairs of bound states and only produce a reachable zero-energy level crossing if the normal state has a strong particle-hole asymmetry.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1612.03619,
  title  = {Impurity bound states in fully gapped $d$-wave superconductors with subdominant order parameters},
  author = {Mahdi Mashkoori and Kristofer Björnson and Annica M. Black-Schaffer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.03619},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

10 pages, 6 figures