CMT144

Anisotropy and Strong-Coupling Effects on the Collective Mode Spectrum of Chiral Superconductors: Application to Sr₂RuO₄

• Author(s): J. A. Sauls, Hao Wu and Suk Bum Chung
• Address: Department of Physics & Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208
• Date: March 2, 2015
• Journal: Frontier in Physics 3:36 (2015) [DOI]
• Abstract: Recent theories of Sr₂RuO₄ based on the interplay of strong interactions, spin-orbit coupling and multi-band anisotropy predict chiral or helical ground states with strong anisotropy of the pairing states, with deep minima in the excitation gap, as well as strong phase anisotropy for the chiral ground state. We develop time-dependent mean field theory to calculate the Bosonic spectrum for the class of 2D chiral superconductors spanning ³He-A to chiral superconductors with strong anisotropy. Chiral superconductors support a pair of massive Bosonic excitations of the time-reversed pairs labeled by their parity under charge conjugation. These modes are degenerate for 2D ³He-A. Crystal field anisotropy lifts the degeneracy. Strong anisotropy also leads to low-lying Fermions, and thus to channels for the decay of the Bosonic modes. Selection rules and phase space considerations lead to large asymmetries in the lifetimes and hybridization of the Bosonic modes with the continuum of un-bound Fermion pairs. We also highlight results for the excitation of the Bosonic modes by microwave radiation that provide clear signatures of the Bosonic modes of an anisotropic chiral ground state.

• Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures. Presented as an invited talk at SCES14, Grenoble, France, July 2014.

• Eprint: [arXiv] [PDF]

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