Superconductivity in the presence of antiferromagnetism for high Tc cuprates

TL;DR

This paper develops a low energy field theory showing that d-wave superconductivity can coexist with antiferromagnetism in underdoped cuprates without affecting the superconducting transition, using a decoupled gauge field approach.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework combining the XY model and Abelian Higgs model to describe coexistence of superconductivity and antiferromagnetism in cuprates.

Findings

Superconductivity and antiferromagnetism can coexist in underdoped cuprates.

Antiferromagnetism does not influence the superconducting transition.

The transition remains in the XY universality class despite coexistence.

Abstract

Using the U(1) holon pair slave boson theory [Phys. Rev. B 64, 052501 2001)], we derive a low energy field theory of dealing with both d-wave superconductivity and antiferromagnetism for underdoped cuprates by constructing both the Cooper pair field and the chargon pair field. In terms of the internal gauge field, the Cooper pair field carries no internal charge while the chargon pair field carries the internal charge. They are decoupled in the low energy limit. This allows us to separately treat the XY model of the Cooper pair field to describe superconductivity and the Abelian Higgs model of the chargon pair field to describe antiferromagnetism in the presence of Dirac fermions at and near the d-wave nodal points. Thus we find that the d-wave superconductivity can coexist with antiferromagnetism and that despite the coexistence, the antiferromagnetism can not affect the superconducting transition, thus allowing the XY universality class in the extreme type II limit.