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Title: Symmetry-Enforced Line Nodes in Unconventional Superconductors [Nodal-Line Superconductors and Band-Sticking]

Journal Article · · Physical Review Letters
 [1];  [2]
  1. Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
  2. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)

We classify line nodes in superconductors with strong spin-orbit interactions and time-reversal symmetry, where the latter may include nonprimitive translations in the magnetic Brillouin zone to account for coexistence with antiferromagnetic order. We find four possible combinations of irreducible representations of the order parameter on high-symmetry planes, two of which allow for line nodes in pseudospin-triplet pairs and two that exclude conventional fully gapped pseudospin-singlet pairs. We show that the former can only be realized in the presence of band-sticking degeneracies, and we verify their topological stability using arguments based on Clifford algebra extensions. Lastly, our classification exhausts all possible symmetry protected line nodes in the presence of spin-orbit coupling and a (generalized) time-reversal symmetry. Implications for existing nonsymmorphic and antiferromagnetic superconductors are discussed.

Research Organization:
Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-06CH11357
OSTI ID:
1374185
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1357855
Journal Information:
Physical Review Letters, Vol. 118, Issue 20; ISSN 0031-9007
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 23 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (14)

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Long Range Antiferromagnetic Ordering Observed Below 20 mK in the Heavy Fermion Superconductor UPt 3 journal April 1998
Symmetry-Protected Line Nodes in Non-symmorphic Magnetic Space Groups: Applications to UCoGe and UPd 2 Al 3 journal February 2017
Symmetry properties of triplet superconductors journal September 1985
Odd parity and line nodes in heavy-fermion superconductors journal December 1995
Effect of Time-Reversal Symmetry on Energy Bands of Crystals journal August 1937
Kronecker Products and Symmetrized Squares of Irreducible Representations of Space Groups journal May 1970
Space group approach to the wavefunction of a Cooper pair journal March 1992
Odd parity and line nodes in nonsymmorphic superconductors journal September 2009
Structure of "triplet" superconducting energy gaps journal October 1984
Topologically stable gapless phases in nonsymmorphic superconductors journal October 2016
Topological Blount's theorem of odd-parity superconductors journal July 2014

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