The role of nematic fluctuations in the thermal melting of pair-density-wave phases in superconductors

ORAL

Abstract

We study properties of phase transitions of the superconductor liquid crystal phases, and analyze the competition between the recently proposed Pair Density Wave (PDW) and nematic $4e$ superconductor (4eSC). Nematic fluctuations enhance the 4eSC and suppress the PDW phase. For a system decoupled from a lattice, the PDW state exists only at $T=0$ and the low temperature phase is a nematic $4e$SC with short ranged PDW order.

*This work was partially supported by CNPq and FAPERJ, by NSF grant DMR 0758462, and by DOE, under Contract DE-FG02-91ER45439

Authors

  • Daniel Barci

    • Department of Physics, Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • Eduardo Fradkin

    • UIUC
    • Department of Physics, University of Illinois
    • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign