Theory of low-energy behaviors in topological $s$-wave pairing superconductors

TL;DR

This paper develops a low-energy effective theory for topological s-wave superconductors, revealing a mixture of p- and s-wave components in the gap function that explains impurity effects.

Contribution

It introduces a second-order perturbation approach in the large-mass expansion to derive the effective gap function in topological s-wave superconductors.

Findings

Effective gap function includes p- and s-wave components.

Mixture of wave components explains impurity effects.

Low-energy theory aligns with numerical results.

Abstract

We construct a low-energy effective theory of topological $s$-wave pairing superconductors, focusing on the mean-field model of superconductor $\mbox{Cu}_{x}\mbox{Bi}_{2}\mbox{Se}_{3}$. Our approach is second-order perturbation with respect to the inverse of the mass (i.e., large-mass expansion) in the Dirac-type electron dispersion from topological insulator $\mbox{Bi}_{2}\mbox{Se}_{3}$. Since the Dirac-type dispersion with a large mass describes non-relativistic electrons, the large-mass expansion corresponds to a low-energy theory with respect to the original setup. We show that the effective gap function has not only a $p$-wave-like component as the primary contribution, but also an $s$-wave-like one as higher-order corrections. The mixture of $p$- and $s$-wave explains the numerical results [Phys. Rev. B 89 (2014) 214506] of the non-magnetic impurity effects.