Spin-orbit scattering in d-wave superconductors

TL;DR

This paper investigates how spin-orbit scattering from impurities significantly impacts the properties of d-wave superconductors, especially near the strong resonance limit, revealing its pair-breaking effects and influence on the superconducting order parameter.

Contribution

It demonstrates that spin-orbit scattering is comparable to scalar scattering near the unitarity limit and introduces a small id_xy component, highlighting its importance in superconductor impurity effects.

Findings

Spin-orbit scattering is comparable to scalar scattering near the unitarity limit.

Spin-orbit scattering acts as a pair-breaking mechanism.

It induces a small id_xy component in the self-energy.

Abstract

When non-magnetic impurities are introduced in a d-wave superconductor, both thermodynamic and spectral properties are strongly affected if the impurity potential is close to the strong resonance limit. In addition to the scalar impurity potential, the charge carriers are also spin-orbit coupled to the impurities. Here it is shown that (i) close to the unitarity limit for the impurity scattering, the spin-orbit contribution is of the same order of magnitude than the scalar scattering and cannot be neglected, (ii) the spin-orbit scattering is pair-breaking and (iii) induces a small id_xy component to the off-diagonal part of the self-energy.