Spatially resolved collective modes in d-wave superconductors

TL;DR

This paper investigates the behavior of collective modes in d-wave superconductors, revealing how their dispersion and decay are affected by temperature, momentum direction, and nodal quasiparticles, with implications for experiments.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the dispersion and decay of collective modes in d-wave superconductors using diagrammatic and quasiclassical methods, highlighting temperature and directional effects.

Findings

Transverse mode dispersion is similar to s-wave at T=0 but softer at finite T.

Longitudinal mode dispersion varies with momentum direction relative to nodes.

Decay rates are influenced by nodal quasiparticles and are largely momentum-independent.

Abstract

We analyze the dispersion of collective modes in a superconductor with $d-$wave symmetry of the order parameter in the presence of long-range Coulomb interaction. We use diagrammatic technique and quasiclassical theory in Keldysh-Nambu formalism to compute longitudinal and transverse pair susceptibilities and extract from them the dispersion of the longitudinal and transverse collective mode. We show that at T=0, the dispersion of the transverse (plasma) mode is the same as in an s-wave superconductor, but at a finite temperature it is softer and has a much larger decay rate due to the partial screening of the Coulomb potential by nodal quasiparticles. We show that the dispersion of the longitudinal mode depends on the direction of momentum with respect to the positions of the nodes of the d-wave gap, while the decay rate of this mode does not depend on momentum. We discuss experimental implications of our results.