Quasiclassical theory of nonlinear response in d-wave superconductors

Abstract

We use a self-consistent Keldysh--Nambu quasiclassical theory to study two related nonlinear phenomena in clean d-wave superconductors: the photo-induced static correction to the order parameter -- the Eliashberg effect -- and third-harmonic generation. Both follow from a systematic perturbative solution of the out-of-equilibrium Eilenberger equation for the Keldysh propagator. For the steady-state correction to the pairing amplitude we find that at temperatures close to the critical temperature and to leading order in the gap magnitude $\Delta$, the photo-induced change of the order parameter is zero at all drive frequencies: in contrast to s-wave superconductors, a clean d-wave superconductor exhibits no Eliashberg enhancement at this order. The gap-enhancing quasiparticle-redistribution channel that drives the effect in the s-wave case is suppressed by an additional power of $\Delta$ in the d-wave case. For third-harmonic generation we find that the charge-density-fluctuation (particle--hole) channel significantly dominates the Schmid--Higgs amplitude-mode contribution over a broad frequency range, the two becoming comparable only in a narrow window near the resonance frequency $\omega\approx 2\sqrt{2}\,\Delta$ if one neglects the diamagnetic part of the current in the normal state. We trace this to the nonequilibrium dynamics of nodal quasiparticles, which must be retained explicitly and which also makes the response sensitive to the orientation of the driving field.