Interlayer Quasiparticle Transport in the Vortex State of Josephson Coupled Superconductors

TL;DR

This paper models how interlayer quasiparticle conductivity in Josephson coupled d-wave superconductors varies with magnetic field and temperature, revealing different behaviors based on vortex correlations.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical calculation of quasiparticle conductivity dependence on magnetic field and temperature considering vortex correlations and impurity scattering.

Findings

Conductivity increases sharply with magnetic field at low T when vortices are weakly correlated.

At high T, conductivity initially decreases with field before increasing linearly.

Correlated vortices lead to a much stronger increase in conductivity with magnetic field.

Abstract

We calculate the dependence of the interlayer quasiparticle conductivity, $\sigma_q$, in a Josephson coupled d-wave superconductor on the magnetic field B||c and the temperature T. We consider a clean superconductor with resonant impurity scattering and a dominant coherent interlayer tunneling. When pancake vortices in adjacent layers are weakly correlated at low T the conductivity increases sharply with B before reaching an extended region of slow linear growth, while at high T it initially decreases and then reaches the same linear regime. For correlated pancakes $\sigma_q$ increases much more strongly with the applied field.