Unconventional superconductors under rotating magnetic field I: density of states and specific heat

Abstract

We develop a fully microscopic theory for the calculations of the angle-dependent properties of unconventional superconductors under a rotated magnetic field. We employ the quasiclassical Eilenberger equations, and use a variation of the Brandt-Pesch-Tewordt (BPT) method to obtain a closed form solution for the Green's function. The equations are solved self-consistently for quasi-two-dimensional $d_{x^2-y^2}$ ($d_{xy}$) superconductors with the field rotated in the basal plane. The solution is used to determine the density of states and the specific heat. We find that applying the field along the gap nodes may result in minima or maxima in the angle-dependent specific heat, depending on the location in the T-H plane. This variation is attributed to the scattering of the quasiparticles on vortices, which depends on both the field and the quasiparticle energy, and is beyond the reach of the semiclassical approximation. We investigate the anisotropy across the T-H phase diagram, and compare our results with the experiments on heavy fermion CeCoIn$_5$.