English

Pair-breaking in superconductors with strong spin-orbit coupling

Superconductivity 2024-05-10 v1

Abstract

We study the influence of symmetry-breaking perturbations on superconductivity in multiorbital materials, with a particular focus on an external magnetic field. We introduce the field-fitness function which characterizes the pair-breaking effects of the perturbation on a given superconducting state. For even parity superconductors we find that this field-fitness function for an external magnetic field is one, implying that the paramagnetic response is controlled only by a generalized effective gg-factor. For odd parity superconductors, the interplay of the effective gg-factor and the field-fitness function can lead to counter-intuitive results. We demonstrate this for pp-wave pairing in the effective j=3/2j=3/2 electronic states of the Luttinger-Kohn model.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2207.01191,
  title  = {Pair-breaking in superconductors with strong spin-orbit coupling},
  author = {D. C. Cavanagh and Daniel F. Agterberg and P. M. R. Brydon},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2207.01191},
  year   = {2024}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-24T12:12:46.011Z