Universal nonanalytic features in response functions of anisotropic superconductors

Abstract

Nonanalytic features are interesting in physics as they carry valuable information about the physical properties of the system. These properties manifest themselves in observables containing a one- or two-particle spectral function. In this work, we use a stationary-point analysis to deduce the nonanalytic features of spectral functions that appear while computing dynamical correlation functions. We focus on the correlation functions relevant to inelastic light scattering from anisotropic superconductors and show that nodal regions of the order parameters are, quite generally, associated with linear-in-frequency scaling at low frequencies, the minima points of the order parameters are associated with step jumps, while the maxima points are associated with $\ln$ singularities. Despite this general association, we show that depending on the anisotropy of the light-scattering vertex, these features can manifest themselves as various power laws, and even not remain singular at all. We demonstrate the conditions under which these happen. We are also able to demonstrate that the association of these nonanalytic features with the extrema and nodal points of the order parameter is, in fact, derived from a more universal behaviour of functions near parabolic-like and saddle-like stationary points. We provide a general prescription that maps the universal behaviour of systems near such stationary points to different scenarios. The approach is readily extendable to other types of spectral functions and we exemplify it by also analyzing the density of states on a square lattice.