Impurity bound states in fully gapped $d$-wave superconductors with subdominant order parameters
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 -wave superconductor only allows virtual bound states. Fully gapped -wave superconducting states have however been proposed in several cuprate systems thanks to subdominant order parameters producing - or -wave superconducting states. Here we study both magnetic and potential impurities in these fully gapped -wave superconductors. Using analytical T-matrix and complementary numerical tight-binding lattice calculations, we show that magnetic and potential impurities behave fundamentally different in - and -wave superconductors. In a -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 -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