Soliton formation in the FFLO phase

M. D. Croitoru (1, 2) , Alexandre I. Buzdin (1)

1 LOMA - Laboratoire Ondes et Matière d'Aquitaine
2 Institute of Theoretical Physics III [Bayreuth]

There is increasing body of experimental evidences of the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) phase in quasi-low-dimensional organic and heavy-fermion superconductors. The emergence of the FFLO phase has been demonstrated mainly based on a thermodynamic quantity or microscopically with spin polarization distribution that exhibit anomalies within the superconducting state in the presence of the in-plane magnetic field. However, the direct observation of superconducting order parameter modulation is so far (still) missing. Within the quasiclassical approach and Ginzburg-Landau formalism we study how the orbital effect of the in-plane field influences the FFLO instability in quasi-one-dimensional superconductors with a sufficiently weak interlayer coupling locking the magnetic flux to Josephson-type vortices. By making use of the continuum limit approximation of the Frenkel-Kontorova model for competing periodicities, we find and characterize the locking behavior of the modulation wave vector, when it remains equal to the magnetic length through some range of values of the external field.

Domaines: Supraconductivité [cond-mat.supr-con]

M. D. Croitoru, Alexandre I. Buzdin. Soliton formation in the FFLO phase. Physical Review B: Condensed Matter and Materials Physics (1998-2015), 2016, 94 (21), pp.214512 (1-8). ⟨10.1103/PhysRevB.94.214512⟩. ⟨hal-01441825⟩