arXiv subjects

Albert Samoilenka

Publications and source records attributed to Albert Samoilenka.

15 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Borromean Criticality in Two Dimensions

The characteristic feature of counterflow superfluids consisting of $N\geq 3$ components -- the so-called Borromean supercounterfluids (BSCF) -- is the presence of $N$ distinct elementary topological excitations (vortices) despite having only $N-1$ independent Goldstone modes. We show that this remarkable property clearly manifests itself at the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless-type transition from the BSCF to the normal state, under the conditions of slight to moderate deviations from the case of exact intercomponent symmetry. More generally, our analysis also applies to any multicomponent superfluid with intercomponent drag fine-tuned to the value when certain composite vortices compete energetically with elementary ones.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2026

Microscopic theory of electron quadrupling condensates

Electron pairing at low temperatures leads to superconductivity. A fundamental question is whether more complex states - characterized by order in four-electron composite objects, termed electron quadrupling or composite order - can exist in materials, and if so, under what conditions they emerge and what properties they exhibit. These states lie beyond the scope of Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory, and a microscopic description of them remained elusive. In the first part of the paper, we provide a general microscopic framework to describe these and the other four-fermion composite states. In the second part of the paper, we derive and solve a specific fermionic model in two and three dimensions that hosts time-reversal symmetry-breaking electron quadrupling order. The fermionic microscopic theory is used to estimate the specific heat and electron density of states.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2023

Counterpart of the Chandrasekhar-Kendall state in noncentrosymmetric superconductors

We demonstrate that superconductors with broken inversion symmetry support a family of stable, spatially localized configurations of the self-knotted magnetic field. These solutions, that we term ``toroflux,'' are the superconducting counterparts of the Chandrasekhar-Kendall states (spheromaks) that appear in highly conducting, force-free astrophysical and nuclear-fusion plasmas. The superconducting torofluxes are solutions of superconducting models, in the presence of a parity-breaking Lifshitz invariant associated with the $O$ point-group symmetry. These solutions are characterized by a non-vanishing helicity of the magnetic field, and also by a toroidal dipole moment of the magnetic field. We demonstrate that a magnetic dipole or a ferromagnetic inclusion in the bulk of a noncentrosymmetric superconductor sources finite-energy toroflux solutions.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2023

Ground state fractal crystals

We propose a generalization of the crystalline order: the ground state fractal crystal. We demonstrate that by deriving a simple continuous-space-discrete-field (CSDF) model whose ground state is a crystal where each unit cell is a fractal.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2022

A microscopic study of boundary superconducting states on a honeycomb lattice

We address the problem of boundary s-wave superconductivity on rectangular honeycomb lattices: nanoflakes, armchair and zigzag nanotubes. We discuss how the presence of edges and corners in these systems can significantly alter the superconducting correlations at a macroscopic length scale, leading to either nontrivial enhancement or suppression of the superconducting gap value near the boundaries. This in turn results in different critical temperatures of the gap closure at boundaries compared to the bulk gap. The effects are macroscopic but strongly depend on the atomic-level structure of the boundaries.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2022

Elevated critical temperature at BCS superconductor-band insulator interfaces

We consider the interface between a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superconductor and non-superconducting band insulator. We show that under certain conditions, such interfaces can have an elevated superconducting critical temperature, without increasing the strength of the pairing interaction at the interface. We identify the regimes where the interface critical temperature exceeds the critical temperature associated with a superconductor-vacuum interface.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Microscopic derivation of superconductor-insulator boundary conditions for Ginzburg-Landau theory revisited. Enhanced superconductivity at boundaries with and without magnetic field

Using the standard Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory, we revise microscopic derivation of the superconductor-insulator boundary conditions for the Ginzburg-Landau (GL) model. We obtain a negative contribution to free energy in the form of surface integral. Boundary conditions for the conventional superconductor have the form $\textbf{n} \cdot \nabla ψ= \text{const} ψ$. These are shown to follow from considering the order parameter reflected in the boundary. The boundary conditions are also derived for more general GL models with higher-order derivatives and pair-density-wave states. It shows that the boundary states with higher critical temperature and the boundary gap enhancement, found recently in BCS theory, are also present in microscopically-derived GL theory. In the case of an applied external field, we show that the third critical magnetic-field value $H_{c3}$ is higher than what follows from the de Gennes boundary conditions and is also significant in type-I regime.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Boundary effects in two-band superconductors

We present a microscopic study of the behavior of the order parameters near boundaries of a two-band superconducting material, described by the standard tight-binding Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer model. We find superconducting surface states. The relative difference between bulk and surface critical temperatures is a nontrivial function of the interband coupling strength. For superconductors with weak interband coupling, boundaries induce variations of the gaps with the presence of multiple length scales, despite non-zero interband Josephson coupling.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Reply to the Comment on "Surface Pair-Density-Wave Superconducting and Superfluid States"

The recent Comment by Vorontsov [arXiv:2007.13696] claims that surface pair-density-wave superconductivity with critical temperature higher than the bulk FFLO critical temperature is not supported by microscopic theory. The conclusion is reached by using an approximate semi-microscopic quasiclassical approach. Here we show that a fully microscopic approach unambiguously demonstrates the existence of surface pair-density-wave superconductivity.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2020

Spiral magnetic field and bound states of vortices in noncentrosymmetric superconductors

We discuss the unconventional magnetic response and vortex states arising in noncentrosymmetric superconductors with chiral octahedral and tetrahedral ($O$ or $T$) symmetry. We microscopically derive Ginzburg-Landau free energy. It is shown that due to spin-orbit and Zeeman coupling magnetic response of the system can change very significantly with temperature. For sufficiently strong coupling this leads to a crossover from type-1 superconductivity at elevated temperature to vortex states at lower temperature. The external magnetic field decay in such superconductors does not have the simple exponential law. We show that in the London limit, magnetic field can be solved in terms of complex force-free fields $\vec{W}$, which are defined by $\nabla \times \vec{W} = \text{const} \vec{W}$. Using that we demonstrate that the magnetic field of a vortex decays in spirals. Because of such behavior of the magnetic field, the intervortex and vortex-boundary interaction becomes non-monotonic with multiple minima. This implies that vortices form bound states with other vortices, antivortices, and boundaries.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2020

Ring solitons and soliton sacks in imbalanced fermionic systems

We show that in superfluids with fermionic imbalance and uniform ground state, there are stable solitons. These solutions are formed of radial density modulations resulting in nodal rings. We demonstrate that these solitons exhibit nontrivial soliton-soliton and soliton-vortex interactions and can form complicated bound states in the form of "soliton sacks". In a phase-modulating (Fulde-Ferrell) background, we find different solitonic states, in the form of stable vortex-antivortex pairs.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Pair-density-wave superconductivity of faces, edges and vertices in systems with imbalanced fermions

We describe boundary effects in superconducting systems with Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) superconducting instability, using Bogoliubov-de-Gennes and Ginzburg-Landau (GL) formalisms. First, we show that in dimensions larger than one the standard GL functional formalism for FFLO superconductors is unbounded from below. This is demonstrated by finding solutions with zero Laplacian terms near boundaries. We generalize the GL formalism for these systems by retaining higher order terms. Next, we demonstrate that a cuboid sample of a superconductor with imbalanced fermions at a mean-field level has a sequence of the phase transitions. At low temperatures it forms Larkin-Ovchinnikov state in the bulk but has a different modulation pattern close to the boundaries. When temperature is increased the first phase transition occurs when the bulk of the material becomes normal while the faces remain superconducting. The second transition occurs at higher temperature where the system retains superconductivity on the edges. The third transition is associated with the loss of edge superconductivity while retaining superconducting gap in the vertices. We obtain the same sequence of phase transition by numerically solving the Bogoliubov-de Gennes model.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2020

Boundary states with elevated critical temperatures in Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superconductors

Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory describes a superconducting transition as a single critical point where the gap function or, equivalently, the order parameter vanishes uniformly in the entire system. We demonstrate that in superconductors described by standard BCS models, the superconducting gap survives near the sample boundaries at higher temperatures than superconductivity in the bulk. Therefore, conventional superconductors have multiple critical points associated with separate phase transitions at the boundary and in the bulk. We show this by revising the Caroli-De Gennes-Matricon theory of a superconductor-vacuum boundary and finding inhomogeneous solutions of the BCS gap equation near the boundary, which asymptotically decay in the bulk. This is demonstrated for a BCS model of almost free fermions and for lattice fermions in a tight-binding approximation. The analytical results are confirmed by numerical solutions of the microscopic model. The existence of these boundary states can manifest itself as discrepancies between the critical temperatures observed in calorimetry and transport probes.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2020

Synthetic nuclear Skyrme matter in imbalanced Fermi superfluids with a multicomponent order parameter

Cooper-pair formation in a system of imbalanced fermions leads to the well-studied Fulde-Ferrell or Larkin-Ovchinnikov superfluid state. In the former case the system forms spontaneous phase gradients while in the latter case it forms a stripelike or a crystal-like density gradient. We show that in multicomponent imbalanced mixtures, the superfluid states can be very different from the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov states. The system generates gradients in both densities and phases by forming three-dimensional vortex-antivortex lattices or lattices of linked vortex loops. The solutions share some properties with the ostensibly unrelated Skyrme model of densely packed baryons and can be viewed as synthetic realization of nuclear Skyrme matter.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2019

Surface pair-density-wave superconducting and superfluid states

Fulde, Ferrell, Larkin, and Ovchinnikov (FFLO) predicted inhomogeneous superconducting and superfluid ground states, spontaneously breaking translation symmetries. In this Letter, we demonstrate that the transition from the FFLO to the normal state as a function of temperature or increased Fermi surface splitting is not a direct one. Instead the system has an additional phase transition to a different state where pair-density-wave superconductivity (or superfluidity) exists only on the boundaries of the system, while the bulk of the system is normal. The surface pair-density-wave state is very robust and exists for much larger fields and temperatures than the FFLO state.

cond-mat.supr-con↗