English

Josephson-frustrated superconductors in a magnetic field

Superconductivity 2014-10-21 v1

Abstract

We study the effect of an externally imposed rotation or magnetic field on frustrated multiband superconductors/superfluids. The frustration originates with multiple superconducting bands crossing the Fermi surface in conjunction with interband Josephson-couplings with a positive sign. These couplings tend to frustrate the phases of the various components of the superconducting order parameter. This in turn leads to an effective description in terms of a \groupUZ\groupUZ-symmetric system, where essentially only the \groupU\groupU-sector couples to the gauge-field representing the rotation or magnetic field. By imposing a large enough net vorticity on the system at low temperatures, one may therefore reveal a resistive vortex liquid state which will feature an unusual additional phase transition in the \groupZ\groupZ-sector. At low enough vorticity there is a corresponding vortex-lattice phase featuring a \groupZ\groupZ phase transition. We argue that this Ising transition phase should be readily observable in experiments.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1410.2021,
  title  = {Josephson-frustrated superconductors in a magnetic field},
  author = {Troels Arnfred Bojesen and Asle Sudbø},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1410.2021},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

8 pages, 7 figures. To appear in Physical Review B