Thermal Transport in Superconductors with coexisting Spin Density Wave Order

TL;DR

This paper investigates how coexisting superconducting and spin density wave orders affect thermal transport in a 2D system, revealing distinct heat conduction signatures based on the symmetry and topology of the order parameters.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of thermal conductivity in coexistence phases, highlighting the impact of Fermi surface topology and order parameter symmetry on heat transport signatures.

Findings

Different SC states have distinct heat transport signatures.

Coexistence of SDW and d-wave pairing can lead to fully gapped excitations.

Presence of Dirac nodal points results in finite residual heat conductivity.

Abstract

We study thermal transport in a two-dimensional system with coexisting $s$- or $d$-wave Superconducting (SC) and Spin Density Wave (SDW) orders. We analyse the nature of coexistence phase in a tight-binding square lattice with $\mathbf{Q}=(\pi,\pi)$ SDW ordering. The electronic thermal conductivity is computed within the framework of the Boltzmann kinetic theory, using Born approximation for the impurity scattering collision integral. We describe the influence of the Fermi surface (FS) topology, the competition between the SC and SDW order parameters, the presence or absence of zero energy excitations in the coexistence phase, on the low temperature behavior of thermal conductivity of the various paring states. We present qualitative analytical, and fully numerical results that show that the heat transport signatures of various SC states emerging from collinear SDW order are quite distinct, and depend on the symmetry properties of the SC order parameter under translation by the SDW nesting vector $\mathbf{Q}$. {A combination of $(\pi,\pi)$-SDW and the $d_{x^2-y^2}$ pairing state results in fully gapped excitations, whereas $(\pi,\pi)$-SDW co-existing with either $d_{xy}$ or $s$-wave pairing states may always have gapless excitations. There appear special stable Dirac nodal points that are not gapped by the SC order in the coexistence phase, resulting in finite residual heat conductivity.