We report observation of Leggett's collective mode in a multi-band MgB2 superconductor with T_c=39K arising from the fluctuations in the relative phase between two superconducting condensates. The novel mode is observed by Raman spectroscopy at 9.4 meV in the fully symmetric scattering channel. The observed mode frequency is consistent with theoretical considerations based on the first principle computations.
We investigate a collective excitation (Leggett's mode) corresponding to small fluctuations of the relative phase of two condensates in two-band superconductor using the effective ``phase only'' action. We consider the possibility of observing Leggett's mode in MgB$_2$ superconductor and conclude that for the known at present values of the two-band model parameters for MgB$_2$ Leggett's mode arises above the two-particle threshold.
Collective excitation modes are a characteristic feature of symmetry-broken phases of matter. For example, superconductors exhibit an amplitude Higgs mode and a phase mode, which are the radial and angular excitations in the Mexican-hat potential of the free energy. In two-band superconductors there exists in addition a Leggett phase mode, which corresponds to collective fluctuations of the interband phase difference. In equilibrium systems amplitude and phase modes are decoupled, since they are mutually orthogonal excitations. The direct detection of Higgs and Leggett modes by linear-response…
We develop a microscopic and gauge-invariant theory for collective modes resulting from the phase of the superconducting order parameter in non-centrosymmetric superconductors. Considering various crystal symmetries we derive the corresponding gauge mode $ω_{\rm G}({\bf q})$ and find, in particular, new Leggett modes $ω_{\rm L}({\bf q})$ with characteristic properties that are unique to non-centrosymmetric superconductors. We calculate their mass and dispersion that reflect the underlying spin-orbit coupling and thus the balance between triplet and singlet superconductivity occurring simultane…
We theoretically investigate coherent optical excitations of collective modes in two-band BCS superconductors, which accommodate two Higgs modes and one Leggett mode corresponding, respectively, to the amplitude and relative-phase oscillations of the superconducting order parameters associated with the two bands. We find, based on a mean-field analysis, that each collective mode can be resonantly excited through a nonlinear light-matter coupling when the doubled frequency of the driving field coincides with the frequency of the corresponding mode. Among the two Higgs modes, the higher-energy o…
Multi-gap superconductors exhibit interesting properties. In an $N$-gap superconductor, we have in general $U(1)^N$ phase invariance. This multiple-phase invariance is partially or totally spontaneously broken in a superconductor. The Nambu-Goldstone modes, as well as Higgs modes, are important and will play an important role in multi-condensate superconductors. The additional phase invariance leads to a new quantum phase, with help of frustrated Josephson effects, such as the time-reversal symmetry breaking, the emergence of massless modes and fractionally quantized-flux vortices. There is a …
The Raman response in a superconductor is a powerful probe to investigate the symmetry of the superconducting gap. Here we show that in a multiband superconductor it also offers the unique opportunity to establish if the driving pairing interaction has an intraband or interband character. In the model with one hole and one electron band the full gauge-invariant Raman response, obtained by accounting for the fluctuations of both the density and superconducting phase degrees of freedom, is always dominated by the Leggett mode, regardless its nature. However, while in the case of intra-band domin…
The Leggett mode associated with out-of-phase oscillations of superconducting phase in multi-band superconductors usually is heavy due to the interband coupling, which makes its excitation and detection difficult. We report on the existence of a massless Leggett mode in three-band superconductors with time-reversal-symmetry-breaking (TRSB). The mass of the Leggett mode is small close to the TRSB transition and vanishes at the transition point, and thus locates within the smallest superconducting energy gap, which makes it stable and detectable. The mass of the Leggett mode can be measured by R…
Collective excitations reveal fundamental properties and potential applications of superconducting states. We theoretically study macroscopic quantum tunneling (MQT) in a Josephson junction composed of multi-band superconductors, focusing on a phase mode induced by inter-band fluctuations: the Josephson-Leggett (JL) collective excitation mode. Using the imaginary-time path-integral method, we derive a formula for the MQT escape rate for low-temperature switching events. We clarify that the JL mode has two major effects on the MQT: (i) the zero-point fluctuations enhance the escape rate, and (i…
Classification of Lifshitz invariant in multiband superconductors: an application to Leggett modes in the linear response regime in Kagome lattice models
A recent Little-Parks experiment on Kagome-structured superconductor CsV_3Sb_5 demonstrated remarkable resistance oscillations with period \phi0/3=hc/6e. Here, we perform analysis based on a theory involving three 2e superconductivity (SC) order parameters associated with the three reciprocal lattice vectors which connect M points of the hexagonal Brillouin zone. In a ring geometry we unveil that, as a series of metastable states, phase of one SC order parameter winds 2πmore or less than the other two ones around the ring, which yields local free energy minima at integer multiples of \phi0/3. …
We study optical responses of Leggett modes in multiband superconductors in the linear response regime. The Leggett mode is a collective mode unique to multiband superconductors that arises from relative phase fluctuations of superconducting orders for different bands. We use the Ginzburg-Landau (GL) description to study the collective modes in multiband systems. We find that multiband superconductors generally allow a linear coupling between the Leggett mode and external electric fields due to the presence of a cross term between different components of superconducting orders in the GL theory…
Using a two-orbital model of the superconducting phase of the pnictides, we compute the spectrum of the Leggett mode -- a collective excitation of the phase of the superconducting gap known to exist in multi-gap superconductors -- for different possible symmetries of the superconducting order parameter. Specifically, we identify the small regions of parameter space where the Leggett mode lies below the two-particle continuum, and hence should be visible as a sharp resonance peak. We discuss the possible utility of the Leggett mode in distinguishing different momentum dependencies of the superc…
Sideband fingerprint of the Leggett mode in terahertz two-dimensional coherent spectroscopy of multiband superconductors
Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research（马克斯·普朗克固体研究所）；University of Tokyo（东京大学）；Cryogenic Research Center, University of Tokyo（东京大学低温研究中心）；RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS)（理化学研究所涌现物质科学中心）；Trans-scale Quantum Science Institute, University of Tokyo（东京大学跨尺度量子科学研究所）
Sr$_2$RuO$_4$ is a prototypical multi-band superconductor with three bands crossing the Fermi level. These bands exhibit distinct dimensional characteristics, with one quasi-2D $γ$-band and two quasi-1D $α$- and $β$-bands. This leads to the expectation that the superconductivity on the $γ$-band may be only weakly Josephson-coupled to that on the other two bands. Based on an explicit microscopic weak coupling calculation appropriate for Sr$_2$RuO$_4$, we study the collective Leggett modes associated with the relative phase oscillations between the bands and show that a relatively soft Leggett m…
Heavily electron-doped and single-layer FeSe superconduct at much higher temperatures than bulk FeSe. There have been a number of proposals attempting to explain the origin of the enhanced transition temperature, including the proximity to magnetic, nematic and antiferro-orbital critical points, as well as possible strong interfacial phonon coupling in the case of single-layer FeSe. In this paper, we examine the effect of the various mechanisms in an effective two-band model. Within our model, the fluctuations associated with these instabilities contribute to different parts of the effective m…
In 1966 Leggett used a two-band superconductor to show that a new collective mode could exist at low temperatures, corresponding to a counter-flow of the superconducting condensates in each band. Here, the theory of electronic Raman scattering in a superconductor by Klein and Dierker (1984) is extended to a multiband superconductor. Raman scattering creates particle/hole pairs. In the relevant $A_{1g}$\ symmetry, the attraction that produces pairing necessarily couples excitations of superconducting pairs to these p/h excitations. In the Appendix it is shown that for zero wave vector transfer …
In multiband superconductors, multiple collective modes exist associated with the multiple order parameters. Oscillations of the amplitude and the relative phase of the order parameters are called Higgs and Leggett modes, respectively. Recently, it has been suggested that nonmagnetic impurity scattering would enhance nonlinear coupling between the Higgs mode and an electromagnetic wave with a frequency located in the superconducting gap region, while its effect on the Leggett mode is still unresolved. Here, we theoretically investigated the nonlinear optical response of multiband Bardeen-Coope…
Since their discovery, it has been suggested that pairing in pnictides can be mediated by spin fluctuations between hole and electron bands. In this view, multiband superconductivity would substantially differ from other systems like MgB2, where pairing is predominantly intraband. Indeed, interband-dominated pairing leads to the coexistence of bonding and antibonding superconducting channels. Here we show that this has profound consequences on the nature of the low-energy superconducting collective modes. In particular, the so-called Leggett mode for phase fluctuations is absent in the usual t…
We investigate the eigen oscillations of internal degrees of freedom (Higgs mode and Goldstone mode) of two-band superconductors using the extended time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau theory, formulated in a work Grigorishin (2021) \cite{grig2}, for the case of two coupled order parameters by both the internal proximity effect and the drag effect. It is demonstrated, that the Goldstone mode splits into two branches: common mode oscillations with the acoustic spectrum, which is absorbed by the gauge field, and anti-phase oscillations with the energy gap (mass) in the spectrum determined by the inter…
We theoretically study the macroscopic quantum tunneling (MQT) in a hetero Josephson junction formed by a conventional single-gap superconductor and a multi-gap one such as ${MgB}_{2}$ and iron-based superconductors. In such a Josephson junction more than one phase differences are defined. We clarify the quantum dynamics of the phase differences and construct a theory for the MQT in the multi-gap Josephson junctions. The dynamics of the phase differences are strongly affected by the Josephson-Leggett mode, which is the out-of-phase oscillation mode of the phase differences. The escape rate is …
Multiband superconductors can host collective excitations with marked differences with respect to their single-band counterpart. We first study the spectrum of collective amplitude fluctuations in a clean two-bands superconductor, showing that the spectral weight of the Higgs mode rapidly deviates from the naive extension of the single band case as the interband coupling is turned on. These results are then used to critically analyze the non-linear optical response in MgB$_2$, providing an explanation for the apparently contradictory results of recent experiments, pointing towards a selective …
Time-Reversal Symmetry Breaking Superconducting State and Collective Modes in Kagome Superconductors
Capital Normal University（首都师范大学）；Kavli Institute for Theoretical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学理论科学研究所）；Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics and Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院物理研究所北京凝聚态物理国家研究中心）；School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学物理科学学院）；Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院理论物理研究所）
We present a dynamical theory for the phase differences along a stacked direction of intrinsic Josephson junctions (IJJ's) in layered multigap superconductors, motivated by the discovery of highly-anisotropic iron-based superconductors with thick perovskite-type blocking layers. The dynamical equations describing AC and DC intrinsic Josephson effects peculiar to multigap IJJ's are derived, and collective Leggett mode excitations in addition to the Josephson plasma established in single-gap IJJ's are predicted. The dispersion relations of their collective modes are explicitly displayed, and the…
Using the functional integral method, we construct a theory of heterotic SIS Josephson junctions between single- and two-gap superconductors. The theory predicts the presence of in-phase and out-of-phase collective oscillation modes of superconducting phases. The former corresponds to the Josephson plasma mode whose frequency is drastically reduced for $\pm$ s-wave symmetry, and the latter is a counterpart of Leggett's mode in Josephson junctions. We also reveal that the critical current and the Fraunhofer pattern strongly depend on the symmetry type of the two-gap superconductor.
We study collective modes near the quantum critical point of a pair-density-wave (PDW) superconductor in 2+1 dimensions. The fate of gaps of various collective modes is investigated by functional renormalization. For incommensurate PDW superconductors, we show that the gapless Leggett mode, protected by the emergent $U(1)$ symmetry, can induce an exponentially small Higgs mass compared to the superconducting gap. Further, for commensurate PDW superconductors, we find an emergent mass hierarchy in the collective modes, i.e. the masses of Leggett boson, Higgs boson, and the superconducting gap c…
We use a tunable laser ARPES to study the electronic properties of the prototypical multiband BCS superconductor MgB2. Our data reveal a strong renormalization of the dispersion (kink) at ~65 meV, which is caused by coupling of electrons to the E2g phonon mode. In contrast to cuprates, the 65 meV kink in MgB2 does not change significantly across Tc. More interestingly, we observe strong coupling to a second, lower energy collective mode at binding energy of 10 meV. This excitation vanishes above Tc and is likely a signature of the elusive Leggett mode.
Motivated by the recent controversy surrounding the Kerr effect measurements in strontium ruthenate \cite{xia:167002}, we examine the electromagnetic response of a clean chiral p-wave superconductor. When the contributions of the collective modes are accounted for, the Hall response in a clean chiral superconductor is smaller by several orders of magnitude than previous theoretical predictions and is too small to explain the experiment. We also uncover some unusual features of the collective modes of a chiral superconductor, namely, that they are not purely longitudinal and couple to external …
Collective, low-energy excitations in quasi-two-dimensional d-wave superconductors are analyzed. While the long-range Coulomb interaction shifts the charge-density-wave and phase modes up to the plasma energy, the spin-density-wave excitation that arises due to a strong local electron-electron repulsion can propagate as a damped collective mode within the superconducting energy gap. It is suggested that these excitations are relevant to high-Tc superconductors, close to the antiferromagnetic phase boundary, and may explain some of the exotic features of the experimentally observed spectral-den…
We study collective excitations in three- and four-band superconductors with inter-band frustration, which causes neither 0 nor $π$ inter-band phases in the superconducting state. Using a low-energy spin-Hamiltonian originating from a multi-band tight-binding model, we find that a massless Leggett mode occurs in a wide parameter region of this four-band system. This massless mode is related to the fact that the mean-field energy does not depend on a continuous superconducting phase. In other words, we find a link of the massless mode with a degeneracy between a time-reversal-symmetry-breaking …
By measuring the dynamic and traditional magnetization relaxations we investigate the vortex dynamics of the newly discovered superconductor SmFeAsO_0.9F_0.1 with Tc = 55K. It is found that the relaxation rate is rather large reflecting a small characteristic pinning energy. Moreover it shows a weak temperature dependence in wide temperature region, which resembles the behavior of the cuprate superconductors. Combining with the resistive data under different magnetic fields, a vortex phase diagram is obtained. Our results strongly suggest that the model of collective vortex pinning applies to …
Recent neutron scattering experiments in the superconducting state of YBCO have been interpreted in terms of a magnetic collective mode whose dispersion relative to the commensurate wavevector has a curvature opposite in sign to a conventional magnon dispersion. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that simple linear response calculations are in support of a collective mode interpretation, and to explain why the dispersion has the curvature it does.
This article reviews theoretical and experimental work on the novel physics in multiband superconductors. Multiband superconductors are characterized by multiple superconducting energy gaps in different bands with interaction between Cooper pairs in these bands. The discovery of prominent multiband superconductors $\mathrm{MgB_2}$ and later iron-based superconductors has triggered enormous interests in multiband superconductors. Most recently discovered superconductors exhibit multiband features. The multiband superconductors possess novel properties that are not shared by their single-band co…
A brief summary of collective mode excitations that can exist in singlet superconductors with irreducible representation $L$ is given. Such excitations may be classified as the coupled excitations of the charge density $ρ$ and the phase $ϕ$ of the order parameter, or of the amplitude $Δ$ of order parameter. Each of these classes may be further characterized in the long wavelength limit by the irreducible representation $\ell$ of the excitation, which may or may not be the same as the ground state $L$.
We study dynamics of a superconducting condensate in the presence of a domain wall defect in the order parameter. We find that broken translation and reflection symmetries result in new collective excitations, bound to the domain wall region. Two additional amplitude/Higgs modes lie below the bulk pairbreaking edge $2Δ$; one of them is a Goldstone mode with vanishing excitation energy. Spectrum of bound collective modes is related to the topological structure and stability of the domain wall. The `unbound' bulk collective modes and transverse gauge field mostly propagate across the domain wall…
Ising superconductivity, observed experimentally in NbSe$_{2}$ and similar materials, has generated tremendous interest. Recently, attention was called to the possible role that spin fluctuations (SF) play in this phenomenon, in addition to the dominant electron-phonon coupling (EPC); the possibility of a predominantly-triplet state was discussed and led to a conjecture of viable singlet-triplet Leggett oscillations. However, these hypotheses have not been put to a quantitative test. In this paper, we report first principle calculations of the EPC and also estimate coupling with SF, including …
We consider a generic Hamiltonian that is suitable for describing a uniform BCS superfluid on a lattice with a two-point basis, and study its collective excitations at zero temperature. For this purpose, we first derive an effective-Gaussian action for the pairing fluctuations, and then extract the low-energy dispersion relations for the in-phase Goldstone and out-of-phase Leggett modes along with the corresponding amplitude (i.e., the so-called Higgs) ones. We find that while the Goldstone mode is gapless at zero momentum and propagating in general, the Leggett mode becomes undamped only with…
A high-energy spin resonance mode is known to exist in many high-temperature superconductors. Motivated by recent scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) experiments in superconducting Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+δ}$, we study the effects of this resonance mode on the local density of states (LDOS). The coupling between the electrons in a d-wave superconductor and the resonance mode produces high-energy peaks in the LDOS, which displays a two-unit-cell periodic modulation around a nonmagnetic impurity. This suggests a new means to not only detect the dynamical spin collective mode but also study its…
The energy, momentum and temperature dependence of the quasiparticle local density of states (LDOS) of a two-dimensional $d_{x^2-y^2}$-wave superconductor with random disorder is investigated using the first-order T-matrix approximation. The results suggest that collective modes such as spin/charge density waves are relevant low-energy excitations of the cuprates that contribute to the observed LDOS modulations in recent scanning tunneling microscopy studies of $\rm Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_x$.
Quasiparticle excitations provide viable information on the physics of unconventional superconductors. Higgs and Leggett modes are some of the classic examples. Another important bosonic excitation is the spin exciton originating from the sign-changing superconducting gap structure. Here we report a direct observation of the temperature-dependent spin exciton in the Andreev spectra of iron-based superconductors. Combined with the other experimental evidence, our observation confirms the extended $s$-wave ($s_\pm$) order parameter symmetry and indirectly proves the spin-fluctuation mechanism of…
We study hybridization of collective plasmon and Carlson-Goldman-Artemenko-Volkov modes in a hybrid system, consisting of a two-dimensional layers of electron gas in the normal state and superconductor, coupled by long-range Coulomb forces. The interaction between these collective modes is not possible in a regular single-layer two-dimensional system since they exist in non-overlapping domains of dimensionless parameter $ωτ$, where $ω$ is the external electromagnetic field frequency and $τ$ is electron scattering time. Thus, in a single-layer structure, these modes are mutually exclusive. Howe…
The origin of the spin resonance observed in CeCoIn5 with Inelastic Neutron Scattering is subject to debate. It has been shown recently that in this heavy electron compound at low temperature an instability to a ground state with coexisting dx2 -y2 -wave superconductivity and Spin Density Wave (SDW) order in a magnetic field is a corollary of the consideration of a collective spin excitation mode in a quasi-2D dx2 -y2 -wave Pauli-limited superconductor. This provides a natural scenario for the occurence of the puzzling high-field-low-temperature phase highlighted in CeCoIn5 . We present perspe…
The collective mode frequencies in isotropic and deformed traps are calculated for general polytropic equation of states, $P\propto n^{γ+1}$, and expressed in terms of $γ$ and the trap geometry. For molecular and standard Bose-Einstein condensates and Fermi gases near Feshbach resonances, the effective power $γ\simeq0.5-1.3$ is calculated from Jastrow type wave-function ansätze, and from the crossover model of Leggett. The resulting mode frequencies are calculated for these phases around the BCS-BEC crossover.
In the recent paper Ohashi and Takada (OT) made statements that in the clean limit considered by us (AV) in 1975, weakly damped collective oscillations in superconductors do not exist due to the Landau damping and their spectrum differs from that obtained in AV. In this Comment we would like to note that these statements arise as a result of a misunderstanding of the term "clean" case. OT considered the limit of frequencies larger, than elastic scattering rate, meanwhile AV obtained weakly damped mode in the case when temperature is larger than scattering rate, the frequencies being smaller (!…
Low-temperature characters of superconducting devices yield definite probes for different superconducting phenomena. We study the macroscopic quantum tunneling (MQT) in a Josephson junction, composed of a single-gap superconductor and a two-gap superconductor. Since this junction has two kinds to the superconducting phase differences, calculating the MQT escape rate requires the analysis of quantum tunneling in a multi-dimensional configuration space. Our approach is the semi-classical approximation along a 1D curve in a 2D potential- energy landscape, connecting two adjacent potential (local)…
We consider the influence of magnetic excitations on the local density of states in the d-wave superconductor. The magnetic susceptibility is calculated within the renormalized $t-t'-J$ model and its influence on the quasiparticle self-energy is considered using a minimal model originally proposed by Polkovnikov {\it et al.}[cond-mat/0203176]. We find the local density of states possess periodic components both along $(π,0)$ and $(π,π)$ directions with the associated wavevectors changing in magnitude as the quasiparticle energy is varied. Comparison with the STM experiment reveals that the cal…
Simple and physically transparent equations for the linear response of layered superconductors with d-wave symmetry of the order parameter are derived by means of the quasiclassic kinetic theory of superconductivity. Responses to solenoidal and potential electric fields have different frequency dependencies. The conductivity describing the response to the solenoidal field is limited by the momentum relaxation, like in a normal metal. The response to the potential electric field depends, in addition, on the branch imbalance relaxation rate. The damping of plasma oscillations of superconducting …
Motivated by recent experiments on atomic Dirac fermions in a tunable honeycomb optical lattice, we study the attractive Hubbard model of superfluidity in the anisotropic honeycomb lattice. At weak-coupling, we find that the maximum mean field pairing transition temperature, as a function of density and interaction strength, occurs for the case with isotropic hopping amplitudes. In this isotropic case, we go beyond mean field theory and study collective fluctuations, treating both pairing and density fluctuations for interaction strengths ranging from weak to strong coupling. We find evidence …
We study the fluctuations of the amplitude (i.e. the Higgs-Anderson) mode in a superconducting system of coupled Dirac particles proposed as a model for possible surface or interface superconductivity in rhombohedral graphite. We show that the absence of Fermi energy and vanishing of the excitation gap of the collective amplitude mode in the model leads to a large fluctuation contribution to thermodynamic quantities such as the heat capacity. As a consequence, the mean-field theory becomes inaccurate indicating that the interactions lead to a strongly correlated state. We also present a micros…
We analyze collective modes in two-band superconductors in the dirty limit. It is shown that these modes exist at all temperatures $T$ below $T_{c}$ provided the frequency of the modes is higher than the inelastic scattering rate and lower than the energy gaps $Δ_{a,b}$. At low temperatures these modes are related to counterphase oscillations of the condensate currents in each band. The spectrum of the collective oscillations is similar to the spectrum of the Josephson ''plasma'' modes in a tunnel Josephson junction but the velocity of the mode propagation in the case under consideration is mu…
In this paper we demonstrate the necessity of including the generally omitted collective mode contributions in calculations of the Meissner effect for non-uniform superconductors. We consider superconducting pairing with non-zero center of mass momentum, as is relevant to high transition temperature cuprates, cold atoms, and quantum chromodynamic superconductors. For the concrete example of the Fulde-Ferrell phase we present a quantitative calculation of the superfluid density, showing the collective mode contributions are not only appreciable but that they derive from the amplitude mode of th…
