No Arabic abstract
Motivated by the discovery of superconductivity in boron-doped (B-doped) diamond, we investigate the localization and superconductivity in heavily doped semiconductors. The competition between Anderson localization and s-wave superconductivity is investigated from the microscopic point of view. The effect of microscopic inhomogeneity and the thermal fluctuation in superconductivity are taken into account using the self-consistent 1-loop-order theory with respect to superconducting fluctuation. The crossover from superconductivity in the host band to that in the impurity band is described on the basis of the disordered three-dimensional attractive Hubbard model for binary alloys. We show that superconductor-insulator transition (SIT) accompanies the crossover. We point out an enhancement of Cooper pairing in the crossover regime. Further localization of the electron wave function gives rise to incoherent Cooper pairs and the pseudogap above T_c. A global phase diagram is drawn for host band superconductivity, impurity band superconductivity, Anderson localization, Fermi liquid state, and pseudogap state. A theoretical interpretation is proposed for superconductivity in the doped diamond, SiC, and Si.
We theoretically study potential unconventional superconductivity in doped AB-type IV-VI semi- conductors, based on a minimal effective model with interaction up to the next-nearest neighbors. According to the experimental implications, we focus on the spin-triplet channels and obtain the superconducting phase diagram with respect to the anisotropy of the Fermi surfaces and the inter- action strength. All the states in the phase diagram are time reversal invariant and are topologically nontrivial. Specifically, in the phase diagram there appear a mirror symmetry protected topological Dirac superconductor phase, a mirror symmetry protected second-order topological superconductor phase, and a full-gap topological superconductor phase with winding number 4. The point group symmetry breaking of each superconducting ground state is also discussed.
We consider the interaction between acceptor pairs in doped semiconductors in the limit of large inter-acceptor separation relevant for low doping densities. Modeling individual acceptors via the spherical model of Baldereschi and Lipari, we calculate matrix elements of the quadrupole tensor between the four degenerate ground states and show that the acceptor has a nonzero quadrupole moment. As a result, the dominant contribution to the large-separation acceptor-acceptor interaction comes from direct (charge-density) terms rather than exchange terms. The quadrupole is the leading nonzero moment, so the electric quadrupole-quadrupole interaction dominates for large separation. We calculate the matrix elements of the quadrupole-quadrupole interaction Hamiltonian in a product-state basis and diagonalize, obtaining a closed-form expression for the energies and degeneracies of the sixteen-state energy spectrum. All dependence on material parameters enters via an overall prefactor, resulting in surprisingly simple and universal results. This simplicity is due, in part, to a mathematical happenstance, the nontrivial vanishing of a particular Wigner 6-j symbol. Results are relevant to the control of two-qubit interactions in quantum computing implementations based on acceptor spins, as well as calculations of the thermodynamic properties of insulating p-type semiconductors.
The density-of-states at the Fermi energy, $N(E_F)$, is low in doped superconducting semiconductors and high-$T_C$ cuprates. This contrasts with the common view that superconductivity requires a large electron-boson coupling $lambda$ and therefore also a large $N(E_F)$. However, the generic Fermi surfaces (FS) of these systems are relatively simple. Here is presented arguments showing that going from a 3-dimensional multi-band FS to a 2-dimensional and simple FS is energetically favorable to superconductivity. Nesting and few excitations of bosons compensate for a low $N(E_F)$. The typical behavior of the 2-dimensional FS for cuprates, and small 3-dimensional FS pockets in doped semiconductors and diamond, leads to $T_C$ variations as a function of doping in line with what has been observed. Diamond is predicted to attain higher $T_C$ from electron doping than from hole doping, while conditions for superconductivity in Si and Ge are less favorable. A high-$T_C$ material should ideally have few flat and parallel FS sheets with a reasonably large $N(E_F)$.
Here we report the synthesis and basic characterization of LaFe1-xCoxAsO for several values of x. The parent phase LaFeAsO orders antiferromagnetically (TN ~ 145 K). Replacing Fe with Co is expected to both electron dope the system and introduce disorder in the FeAs layer. For x = 0.05 antiferromagnetic order is destroyed and superconductivity is observed at Tconset = 11.2 K. For x = 0.11 superconductivity is observed at Tc(onset) = 14.3 K, and for x = 0.15 Tc = 6.0 K. Superconductivity is not observed for x = 0.2 and 0.5, but for x = 1, the material appears to be ferromagnetic (Tc ~ 56 K) as judged by magnetization measurements. We conclude that Co is an effective dopant to induce superconductivity. Somewhat surprisingly, the system appears to tolerate considerable disorder in the FeAs planes.
We numerically study the interplay between superconductivity and disorder on the graphene honeycomb lattice with on-site Hubbard attractive interactions U using a spatially inhomogeneous self-consistent Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) approach. In the absence of disorder there are two phases at charge neutrality. Below a critical value Uc for attractive interactions there is a Dirac semimetal phase and above it there is a superconducting phase. We add scalar potential disorder to the system, while remaining at charge neutrality on average. Numerical solution of the BdG equations suggests that while in the strong attraction regime (U > Uc) disorder has the usual effect of suppressing superconductivity, in the weak attraction regime (U < Uc) weak disorder enhances superconductivity. In the weak attraction regime, disorder that is too strong eventually suppresses superconductivity, i.e., there is an optimal disorder strength that maximizes the critical temperature Tc. Our numerical results also suggest that in the weakly disordered regime, mesoscopic inhomogeneities enhance superconductivity significantly more than what is predicted by a spatially uniform mean-field theory a` la Abrikosov-Gorkov. In this regime, superconductivity consists of rare phase-coherent superconducting islands. We also study the enhancement of the superconducting proximity effect by disorder and mesoscopic inhomogeneities, and obtain typical spatial plots of the tunneling density of states and the superfluid susceptibility that can be directly compared to scanning tunneling miscroscopy (STM) experiments on proximity-induced superconductivity in graphene.