English

Theory of $(s+id)$ pairing in mixed-valent correlated metals

Superconductivity 2021-01-04 v1 Strongly Correlated Electrons

Abstract

Motivated by the recent discovery of superconductivity in square-planar nickelates as well as by longstanding puzzling experiments in heavy-fermion superconductors, we study Cooper pairing between correlated dd-electrons coupled to a band of weakly-correlated electrons. We perform self-consistent large N calculations on an effective tJt-J model for the dd-electrons with additional hybridization. Unlike previous studies of mixed-valent systems, we focus on parameter regimes where both hybridized bands are relevant to determining the pairing symmetry. For sufficiently strong hybridization, we find a robust s+ids+id pairing which breaks time-reversal and point-group symmetries in the mixed-valent regime. Our results illustrate how intrinsically multi-band systems such as heavy-fermions can support a number of highly non-trivial pairing states. They also provide a putative microscopic realization of previous phenomenological proposals of s+ids+id pairing and suggest a potential resolution to puzzling experiments in heavy-fermion superconductors such as U1x_{1-x}Thx_xBe13_{13} which exhibit two superconducting phase transitions and a full gap at lower temperatures.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2007.04373,
  title  = {Theory of $(s+id)$ pairing in mixed-valent correlated metals},
  author = {Emilian M. Nica and Onur Erten},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.04373},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

13 pages, 13 figures