English

Pair density modulation from glide symmetry breaking and nematic superconductivity

Superconductivity 2025-06-26 v1

Abstract

Pair density modulation is a superconducting state, recently observed in exfoliated iron-based superconductor flakes, in which the superconducting gap oscillates strongly with the same periodicity as the underlying crystalline lattice. We propose a microscopic model that explains this modulation through a combination of glide-mirror symmetry breaking and the emergence of nematic superconductivity. The first ingredient results in a sublattice texture on the Fermi surface, which is aligned with the anisotropic superconducting gap of the nematic s±+ds_\pm+d state. This gives rise to distinctive gap maxima and minima located on the two inequivalent iron sublattices while still being a zero-momentum pairing state. We discuss how further investigation of such modulations can give insight into the nature of the superconducting pairing, such as the signs of the order parameters and visualization of a phase transition to a mixed two-component state using local probes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.19903,
  title  = {Pair density modulation from glide symmetry breaking and nematic superconductivity},
  author = {Michał Papaj and Lingyuan Kong and Stevan Nadj-Perge and Patrick A. Lee},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.19903},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

7+4 pages, 4+3 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T03:32:07.557Z