Description:

We report theoretical results for the electronic contribution to thermal transport for chiral superconductors belonging to even- or odd-parity E1 and E2 representations of the tetragonal and hexagonal point groups. Chiral superconductors exhibit novel transport properties that depend on the topology of the order parameter, topology of the Fermi surface, the spectrum of bulk Fermionic excitations, and - as we highlight - the structure of the impurity potential. The anomalous thermal Hall effect is shown to be sensitive to the structure of the electron-impurity t-matrix, as well as the winding number, ν, of the chiral order parameter, Δ(p) = |Δ(p)|exp(iνϕp). For heat transport in a chiral superconductor with isotropic impurity scattering, i.e. point-like impurities, a transverse heat current is obtained for ν = ±1, but vanishes for |ν| > 1. This is not a universal result. For finite-size impurities with radii of order or greater than the Fermi wavelength, R ≥ ℏ/pf, the thermal Hall conductivity is finite for chiral order with |ν| ≥ 2. Our results also provide quantitative formulae for interpreting heat transport experiments for superconductors predicted to exhibit broken time-reversal and mirror symmetries.

Dr. V. Ngampruetikorn, Northwestern University

Host: James Sauls

Keywords: Physics, Astronomy, Condensed Matter