Thermal transport in superconductors with coexisting spin density wave order

Abstract

We study thermal transport in a two-dimensional system with coexisting s- or d-wave superconducting (SC) and spin density wave (SDW) orders. We analyze the nature of coexistence phase in a tight-binding square lattice with Q=(π,π) SDW ordering. The electronic thermal conductivity is computed within the framework of the Boltzmann kinetic theory, using Born approximation for the impurity scattering collision integral. We describe the influence of the Fermi surface (FS) topology, the competition between the SC and SDW order parameters, and the presence or absence of zero energy excitations in the coexistence phase, on the low temperature behavior of thermal conductivity of the various pairing states. We present qualitative analytical and fully numerical results that show that the heat transport signatures of various SC states emerging from collinear SDW order are quite distinct and depend on the symmetry properties of the SC order parameter under translation by the SDW nesting vector Q. A combination of (π,π)-SDW and the dx2−y2 pairing state results in fully gapped excitations, whereas (π,π)-SDW coexisting with either dxy or s-wave pairing states may always have gapless excitations. There appear special stable Dirac nodal points that are not gapped by the SC order in the coexistence phase, resulting in finite residual heat conductivity.

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