d-wave Quasiparticles in the Tilted Vortex Lattice

TL;DR

This paper studies how tilting the vortex lattice affects quasiparticle spectra in d-wave superconductors, using a simplified model and analyzing gauge dependence, providing insights into anisotropic effects and spectral behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified one-dimensional model to analyze the effects of vortex lattice tilting on quasiparticle spectra in d-wave superconductors, highlighting gauge dependence issues.

Findings

Tilting influences quasiparticle spectra in the model.

Large anisotropy simplifies the problem to a one-dimensional form.

Spectral properties depend on the choice of singular gauge.

Abstract

We investigate the quasiparticle spectrum of a d-wave superconductor in the mixed state, focussing on the effects of varying the in-plane angular alignment (or tilting) of the vortex and crystal lattices. Our approach starts with a linearized Bogoliubov-de Gennes equation cast into a simple form by the Franz-Te\v{s}anovi\'{c} singular gauge transformation. The zero magnetic field spectrum is characterized by the anisotropy $\alpha_D$ near the four Fermi-surface nodes; at large $\alpha_D$ the model simplifies into a one-dimensional form that provides asymptotic results. Numerical and analytical results are presented and compared with previous studies. We find that tilting can be understood in terms of the one-dimensional model at large $\alpha_D$. We see a striking dependence on the choice of singular gauge, consistent with earlier results, but do not attempt to resolve the issue of which gauge best describes the microscopic physics.