Structure of the superconducting state in a fully frustrated wire network with dice lattice geometry

TL;DR

This paper studies the superconducting state in a fully frustrated dice lattice wire network near the transition temperature, revealing degenerate configurations and how magnetic interactions lift this degeneracy.

Contribution

It introduces an effective Ginzburg-Landau model on a triangular lattice and analyzes degeneracy and its lifting in the superconducting state.

Findings

Identifies a large class of degenerate equilibrium states.

Shows degeneracy is proportional to system size.

Demonstrates magnetic interactions lift degeneracy.

Abstract

The superconducting state in a fully frustrated wire network with the dice lattice geometry is investigated in the vicinity of the transition temperature. Using Abrikosov's variational procedure, we write the Ginzburg-Landau free energy functional projected on its unstable supspace as an effective model on the triangular lattice of sixfold coordinated sites. For this latter model, we obtain a large class of degenerate equilibrium configurations in one to one correspondence with those previously constructed for the pure XY model on the maximally frustrated dice lattice. The entropy of these states is proportional to the linear size of the system. Finally we show that magnetic interactions between currents provide a degeneracy lifting mechanism.