Exceeding the Chandrasekhar-Clogston limit in flat-band superconductors: A multiband strong-coupling approach

Abstract

Hybrid systems of superconductors and magnets display several intriguing properties, both from a fundamental physics point of view and with practical applications. Promising applications in superconducting spintronics motivate a search for systems where superconductivity can survive larger in-plane critical magnetic fields than the conventional limit. The Chandrasekhar-Clogston (CC) limit applies to thin-film conventional superconductors with in-plane magnetic fields such that orbital effects may be ignored. For a magnetic field strength comparable to the superconducting gap at zero temperature and zero field, a spin-split normal state attains lower free energy than the superconducting state. A multiband superconductor with a flat band placed just below the Fermi surface has been shown to surpass the CC limit using weak-coupling theory. Since the dimensionless coupling determining the critical temperature scales with the density of states, it is natural to anticipate corrections from strong-coupling theory in flat-band systems, owing to the large density of states of the flat bands. We derive Eliashberg equations and the free energy for a multiband superconductor in a magnetic field. First, we show that the CC limit can be exceeded by a small amount in one-band strong-coupling superconductors due to self-energy renormalization of the magnetic field. Next, we consider a two-band system with one flat band and find that the CC limit can be exceeded by a large amount also in strong-coupling theory, even when including hybridization between bands that intersect.