arXiv subjects

Egor Babaev

Publications and source records attributed to Egor Babaev.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

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

Pinning effects in a two-dimensional cluster glass

We study numerically the glass formation and depinning transition of a system of two-dimensional cluster-forming monodisperse particles in presence of pinning disorder. The pairwise interaction potential is nonmonotonic, and is motivated by the intervortex forces in type-$1.5$ superconductors. Such systems can form cluster glasses due to the intervortex interactions following a thermal quench, without underlying disorder. We study the effects of vortex pinning in these systems. We find that a small density of pinning centers of moderate depth has limited effect on vortex glass formation, i.e., formation of vortex glasses is dominated by intervortex interactions. At higher densities pinning can significantly affect glass formation. The cluster glass depinning, under a constant driving force, is found to be plastic, with features distinct from non-cluster-forming systems such as clusters merging and breaking. We find that in general vortices with cluster-forming interaction forces can exhibit stronger pinning effects than regular vortices.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2020

Cluster self-assembly condition for arbitrary interaction potentials

We present a sufficient criterion for the emergence of cluster phases in an ensemble of interacting classical particles with repulsive two-body interactions. Through a zero-temperature analysis in the low density region we determine the relevant characteristics of the interaction potential that make the energy of a two-particle cluster-crystal become smaller than that of a simple triangular lattice in two dimensions. The method leads to a mathematical condition for the emergence of cluster crystals in terms of the sum of Fourier components of a regularized interaction potential, which can be in principle applied to any arbitrary shape of interactions. We apply the formalism to several examples of bounded and unbounded potentials with and without cluster-forming ability. In all cases, the emergence of self-assembled cluster crystals is well captured by the presented analytic criterion and verified with known results from molecular dynamics simulations at vanishingly temperatures. Our work generalises known results for bounded potentials to repulsive potentials of arbitrary shape.

cond-mat.soft↗

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↗

arXiv2020

Magnetic signatures of domain walls in $s+is$ and $s+id$ superconductors: observability and what that can tell us about the superconducting order parameter

One of the defining features of spontaneously broken time-reversal symmetry (BTRS) is the existence of domain walls, the detection of which would be strong evidence for such systems. There is keen interest in BTRS currently, in part, due to recent muon spin rotation experiments, which have pointed towards $\textrm{Ba}_{1-x}\textrm{K}_x\textrm{Fe}_2\textrm{As}_2$ exhibiting a remarkable case of $s$-wave superconductivity with spontaneously broken time-reversal symmetry. A key question, however, is how to differentiate between the different theoretical models which describe such a state. Two particularly popular choices of model are $s+is$ and $s+id$ superconducting states. In this paper, we obtain solutions for domain walls in $s+is$ and $s+id$ systems, including the effects of lattice anisotropies. We show that, in general, both models exhibit spontaneous magnetic field, that extend along the entire length of the domain wall. We demonstrate the qualitative difference between the magnetic signatures of $s+is$ and $s+id$ domain walls and propose a procedure to extract the superconducting pairing symmetry from the magnetic-field response of domain walls.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2019

Chiral p-wave superconductors have complex coherence and magnetic field penetration lengths

We show that in superconductors that break time reversal symmetry and have anisotropy, such as p+ip materials, all order parameters and magnetic modes are mixed. Excitation of the gap fields produces an excitation of the magnetic field and vice versa. Correspondingly the long-range decay of the magnetic field and order parameter are in general given by the same exponent. Thus one cannot characterize p+ip superconductors by the usual coherence and magnetic field penetration lengths. Instead the system has normal modes that are associated with linear combinations of magnetic fields, moduli of and phases of the order parameter components. Each such normal mode has its own decay length that plays the role of a hybridized coherence/magnetic field penetration length. On a large part of the parameter space these exponents are complex. Therefore the system in general has damped oscillatory decay of the magnetic field accompanied by damped oscillatory variation of the order parameter fields.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2019

Non-London electrodynamics in a multiband London model: anisotropy-induced non-localities and multiple magnetic field penetration lengths

The London model describes strongly type-2 superconductors as massive vector field theories, where the magnetic field decays exponentially at the length scale of the London penetration length. This also holds for isotropic multi-band extensions, where the presence of multiple bands merely renormalises the London penetration length. We show that, by contrast, the magnetic properties of anisotropic multi-band London models are not this simple, and the anisotropy leads to the inter-band phase differences becoming coupled to the magnetic field. This results in the magnetic field in such systems having N+1 penetration lengths, where N is the number of field components or bands. That is, in a given direction, the magnetic field decay is described by N+1 modes with different amplitudes and different decay length scales. For certain anisotropies we obtain magnetic modes with complex masses. That means that magnetic field decay is not described by a monotonic exponential increment set by a real penetration length but instead is oscillating. Some of the penetration lengths are shown to diverge away from the superconducting phase transition when the mass of the phase-difference mode vanishes. Finally the anisotropy-driven hybridization of the London mode with the Leggett modes can provide an effectively non-local magnetic response in the nominally local London model. Focusing on the two-component model, we discuss the magnetic field inversion that results from the effective non-locality, both near the surface of the superconductor and around vortices. In the regime where the magnetic field decay becomes non-monotonic, the multiband London superconductor is shown to form weakly-bound states of vortices.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2019

Skyrmions formation due to unconventional magnetic modes in anisotropic multi-band superconductors

Multiband superconductors have a sufficient number of degrees of freedom to allow topological excitations characterized by Skyrmionic topological invariants. In the most common, clean s-wave multiband, systems the interband magnetic coupling favours composite vortex solutions, without a Skyrmionic topological charge. It was discussed recently that certain kinds of anisotropies lead to hybridisation of the interband phase difference (Leggett) mode with magnetic modes, dramatically changing the hydromagnetostatics of the system. Here we report this effect for a range of parameters that substantially alter the nature of the topological excitations, leading to solutions characterized by a nontrivial topological invariant, rather than the standard composite vortex solutions. This invariant is not truly topologically conserved but is energetically conserved, leading to a texture formed of bound excitations in each band, namely fractional vortices, each carrying a fraction of the flux quantum. We demonstrate that in this regime there is a rich spectrum of Skyrmion solutions, with various topological charges, that are robust with respect to changes of parameters of the system and present for a wide range of anisotropies.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2019

Hierarchies of Length Scale Based Typology in Anisotropic Multiband Superconductor

Since Ginzburg and Landau's seminal work in 1950 superconducting states have been classified by the hierarchy of the fundamental length scales of the theory; the magnetic field penetration lengths and coherence lengths. In the simplest single-component case they form a dimensionless ratio κ. As pointed out by Ginzburg in 1952, in general the ratio depends on the direction of the applied magnetic field due to material anisotropies. Single component materials can therefore display type-1 superconductivity when the field is applied in one direction and type-2 when the field is applied in a different direction. In this paper we expand the above length scale analysis to anisotropic multi-component superconductors, that can have multiple coherence lengths as well as multiple magnetic field penetration lengths, leading to unconvential length scale hierarchies. We demonstrate that the anisotropies in multi-band superconductors cannot in general be rescaled, leading to new regimes with various mixed hierarchies in different directions. For example, a regime is possible, where for a field applied in a certain direction coherence lengths are smaller than the magnetic field penetration lengths in one of the perpendicular directions, where as the penetration lengths are lager in the another direction. We demonstrate a new regime, where vortices form stripes in the direction where coherence lengths exceed the magnetic field penetration length and vortex cores overlap, while the vortex stripes repel each other in the orthogonal direction where the magnetic field penetration length exceeds the coherence lengths.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2019

Ring dark solitons in three-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates

In this work we present a systematic study of the three-dimensional extension of the ring dark soliton examining its existence, stability, and dynamics in isotropic harmonically trapped Bose-Einstein condensates. Detuning the chemical potential from the linear limit, the ring dark soliton becomes unstable immediately, but can be fully stabilized by an external cylindrical potential. The ring has a large number of unstable modes which are analyzed through spectral stability analysis. Furthermore, a few typical destabilization dynamical scenarios are revealed with a number of interesting vortical structures emerging such as the two or four coaxial parallel vortex rings. In the process of considering the stability of the structure, we also develop a modified version of the degenerate perturbation theory method for characterizing the spectra of the coherent structure. This semi-analytical method can be reliably applied to any soliton with a linear limit to explore its spectral properties near this limit. The good agreement of the resulting spectrum is illustrated via a comparison with the full numerical Bogolyubov-de Gennes spectrum. The application of the method to the two-component ring dark-bright soliton is also discussed.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2019

Vortices and composite order in $\mathrm{SU}(N)$ theories coupled to Abelian gauge field

We consider $\mathrm{SU}(N)$-symmetric Ginzburg-Landau models coupled to non-compact Abelian gauge field focusing on the case $N > 2$ at finite temperature. We show that, at least for sufficiently large gauge-field coupling constants, these models have two phase transitions. The intermediate phase between the symmetric and low-temperature phases is a state with composite neutral order and no Meissner effect. In this neutral phase the system spontaneously breaks only the symmetry associated with phase differences and density differences between components. For $N > 2$, in contrast to the $SU(2)$ case, the neutral state cannot be mapped onto an $\mathrm{O}(M)$ model. We term this state ${\mathbb{C}{P}}^{N-1}$-neutral phase. We also show that while $\mathrm{SU}(N)$-symmetric Ginzburg-Landau models are not superconductors or superfluids in the usual sense, their state in external field at sufficiently low temperature is a vortex lattice.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2019

Comment on the paper by D. Efremov and Yu.N. Ovchinnikov "Singular ground state of multiband inhomogeneous superconductors", Phys. Rev. B 99, 224508 (2019)

We show that the conclusion reported in Ref. 1, that there are no spontaneous magnetic fields in multiband superconductors that break time reversal symmetry, is incorrect. We demonstrate that the state proposed in Ref. 1 is not a solution of the Ginzburg-Landau equations for the considered model. The reason is that in Ref. 1 one of the Ginzburg-Landau equations is neglected and substituted by the spurious zero current restriction. This restriction together with all of the Ginzburg-Landau equations leads to an overdetermined system which does not have a solution. This inconsistency invalidates all the results of the paper.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2019

Antichiral and nematicity-wave superconductivity

Larkin-Ovchinnikov superconducting state has spontaneous modulation of Cooper pair density, while Fulde-Ferrell state has a spontaneous modulation in the phase of the order parameter. We report that a quasi-two-dimensional Dirac metal, under certain conditions has principally different inhomogeneous superconducting states that by contrast have spontaneous modulation in a submanifold of a multiple-symmetries-breaking order parameter. The first state we find can be viewed as a nematic superconductor where the nematicity vector spontaneously breaks rotational and translational symmetries due to spatial modulation. The other demonstrated state is a chiral superconductor with spontaneously broken time-reversal and translational symmetries. It is characterized by an order parameter, which forms a lattice pattern of alternating chiralities.

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↗

arXiv2019

Spin-Orbit Protection of Induced Superconductivity in Majorana Nanowires

Spin-orbit interaction (SOI) plays a key role in creating Majorana zero modes in semiconductor nanowires proximity coupled to a superconductor. We track the evolution of the induced superconducting gap in InSb nanowires coupled to a NbTiN superconductor in a large range of magnetic field strengths and orientations. Based on realistic simulations of our devices, we reveal SOI with a strength of 0.15-0.35 eV$\require{mediawiki-texvc}Å$. Our approach identifies the direction of the spin-orbit field, which is strongly affected by the superconductor geometry and electrostatic gates.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗