Superconducting diode effect in correlated electron systems by nonreciprocal magnetism

TL;DR

This study reveals a new correlation-driven mechanism for the superconducting diode effect in strongly correlated electron systems, where nonreciprocal supercurrents induce antiferromagnetic order, enabling perfect diode efficiency.

Contribution

It demonstrates that electron correlations can suppress conventional SDE and that supercurrents can induce antiferromagnetic order, offering a novel mechanism for the diode effect.

Findings

Electron correlations suppress the conventional intrinsic SDE.

Supercurrent nonreciprocally induces antiferromagnetic order.

This mechanism enables perfect diode efficiency.

Abstract

The superconducting diode effect (SDE), characterized by a nonreciprocal critical current in superconductors, has recently been observed in strongly correlated electron systems and near quantum criticality, pointing to unconventional mechanisms beyond weak-coupling theories. Here we investigate the SDE in the Rashba-Zeeman-Hubbard model, which captures $d$-wave superconductivity in an antiferromagnetic quantum critical regime, using the Dyson-Gor'kov equation with the fluctuation exchange approximation. We show that electron correlations suppress the conventional intrinsic SDE arising from depairing currents. More importantly, a supercurrent nonreciprocally induces antiferromagnetic order, which fundamentally governs the critical current and enables perfect diode efficiency. Our results reveal a previously unrecognized correlation-driven mechanism of the SDE and establish strongly correlated superconductors as a platform for superconducting diode physics.