Vortex lattice structure dependent on pairing symmetry in Rashba superconductors

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the vortex lattice structure in Rashba noncentrosymmetric superconductors depends on pairing symmetry, revealing that singlet-triplet mixing influences lattice reflection symmetry and may relate to magnetic stability in CePt3Si.

Contribution

It demonstrates the dependence of vortex lattice modulation and symmetry on pairing symmetry and spin mixing in Rashba superconductors using Ginzburg-Landau theory.

Findings

Vortex lattice shows FFLO-type modulation in high fields.

Lattice symmetry depends on singlet-triplet mixing.

Degenerate lattice orientations may explain low magnetic decay in CePt3Si.

Abstract

Vortex lattice structures in Rashba noncentrosymmetric superconductors in magnetic fields parallel to the basal plane (${\bf H} \perp c$) are examined based on the BCS-like Hamiltonian and the resulting Ginzburg-Landau functional. Due to the momentum dependent anisotropy of the Zeeman effect induced by the broken inversion symmetry, the vortex lattice in higher fields generally shows some unidirectional modulation of Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) type orienting in the plane perpendicular to ${\bf H}$. However, the direction of the modulation and the lattice structure depend significantly on the underlying pairing symmetry: When the mixing between spin singlet and triplet pairing components is negligible, the resulting modulated structure tends to have reflection symmetry, while the vortex lattice in systems with a significant singlet-triplet mixing has no reflection symmetry in most cases. The latter result implying the presence in {\it real} materials of two degenerate orientations of the lattice structure separated by domain walls may be relevant to the extremely low magnetic decay rate observed in CePt$_3$Si.