Odd-frequency superconductivity near a magnetic impurity in a conventional superconductor

Abstract

Superconductor-ferromagnetic heterostructures have been suggested as one of the most promising alternatives of realizing odd-frequency superconductivity. In this work we consider the limit of shrinking the ferromagnetic region to the limit of a single impurity embedded in a conventional superconductor, which gives rise to localized Yu-Shiba-Rusinov (YSR) bound states with energies inside the superconducting gap. We demonstrate that all the sufficient ingredients for generating odd-frequency pairing are present at the vicinity of these impurities. We investigate the appearance of all possible pair amplitudes in accordance with the Berezinskii SP*OT*=−1 rule, with the symmetry under the exchange of spin, spatial, orbital (in our case O=+1), and time index, respectively. We study the spatial and frequency dependence of the possible pairing amplitudes, analyzing their evolution with impurity strength and identifying a reciprocity between different symmetries related through impurity scattering. We show that the odd-frequency spin-triplet pairing amplitude dominates at the critical impurity strength, where the YSR states merge at the middle of the gap, while the even components are quenched close to the impurity. We also show that the spin-polarized local density of states exhibits the same spatial and frequency behavior as the odd-ω spin-triplet component at the critical impurity strength.

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