Nonreciprocal Meissner response in parity-mixed superconductors

TL;DR

This paper reveals that parity-mixed superconductors exhibit a nonreciprocal Meissner effect caused by a unidirectional correction to superfluid density, providing a new way to probe their properties.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of nonreciprocal superfluid density and demonstrates its role in the Meissner effect in parity-mixed superconductors.

Findings

Nonreciprocal superfluid density causes asymmetric magnetic screening.

Analysis of UTe₂ shows temperature dependence of the effect.

The effect helps probe parity-mixing and gap structures.

Abstract

The parity breaking gives rise to rich superconducting properties through the admixture of even and odd-parity Cooper pairs. A new light has been shed on parity-breaking superconductors by recent observations of nonreciprocal responses such as the nonlinear optical responses and the superconducting diode effect. In this Letter, we demonstrate that the nonreciprocal responses are characterized by a unidirectional correction to the superfluid density, which we call nonreciprocal superfluid density. This correction leads to the nonreciprocal Meissner effect, namely, asymmetric screening of magnetic fields due to the nonreciprocal magnetic penetration depth. Performing a microscopic analysis of an exotic superconductor UTe$_2$ and examining the temperature dependence and renormalization effect, we show that the nonreciprocal Meissner effect is useful to probe parity-mixing properties and gap structures in superconductors.