On Superconductors,Superfluids and Torsion Vortices

TL;DR

This paper explores the effects of spacetime torsion on superconductors and superfluids, proposing new physical interpretations and showing how torsion influences the ground states and electromagnetic properties in these systems.

Contribution

It introduces novel interpretations of the Meissner effect in torsionful spacetimes and links torsion to the geometrization of electromagnetism within the Landau-Ginzburg framework.

Findings

Torsion modifies the symmetry-breaking vacuum in superconductors.

Torsion can be analogous to a Maxwell potential outside Abrikosov tubes.

Torsion affects the ground state of superfluid phases in solid state physics.

Abstract

The Meissner effect for superconductors in spacetimes with torsion is revisited. Two new physical interpretations are presented. The first considers the Landau-Ginzburg theory yields a new symmetry-breaking vacuum depending on torsion. In the second interpretation a gravitational Meissner torsional effect where when the Higgs field vanishes, torsion and electromagnetic fields need not vanish and outside the Abrikosov tubes a torsion vector analogous to the Maxwell potential is obtained. The analogy is even stronger if we think that in this case the torsion vector has to be derivable from a torsion potential. Another solution of Landau-Ginzburg equation is shown to lead naturally to the geometrization of the electromagnetism in terms of the torsion field. As an application we show that Landau-Ginzburg equations extended to Cartan spaces allow us to determine torsion in the case when the order parameter is frozen to a minimum. It is shown that the presence of torsion in solid state physics changes the ground state of the superfluid phases.