Quasiparticle scattering from vortices in d-wave superconductors I: Superflow contribution

TL;DR

This paper investigates how superflow around vortices in d-wave superconductors scatters massless Dirac quasiparticles, providing detailed calculations of the differential cross section through partial wave and Born-limit analyses.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed calculation of the superflow-induced quasiparticle scattering cross section, including an analytic expression in the Born limit, advancing understanding of vortex-quasiparticle interactions.

Findings

Differential cross section calculated via partial wave analysis.

Analytic expression derived in the Born approximation.

Superflow significantly influences quasiparticle scattering behavior.

Abstract

In the vortex state of a d-wave superconductor, massless Dirac quasiparticles are scattered from magnetic vortices via a combination of two basic mechanisms: effective potential scattering due to the superflow swirling about the vortices and Aharonov-Bohm scattering due to the Berry phase acquired by a quasiparticle upon circling a vortex. In this paper, we study the superflow contribution by calculating the differential cross section for a quasiparticle scattering from the effective non-central potential of a single vortex. We solve the massless Dirac equation in polar coordinates and obtain the cross section via a partial wave analysis. We also present a more transparent Born-limit calculation and in this approximation we provide an analytic expression for the differential cross section. The Berry phase contribution to the quasiparticle scattering is considered in a separate paper.