We formulate a theory for the polarization-dependence of the electronic (pair-breaking) Raman response for the recently discovered non-centrosymmetric superconductors in the clean limit at zero temperature. Possible applications include the systems CePt$_3$Si and Li$_2$Pd$_x$Pt$_{3-x}$B which reflect the two important classes of the involved spin-orbit coupling. We provide analytical expressions for the Raman vertices for these two classes and calculate the polarization dependence of the electronic spectra. We predict a two-peak structure and different power laws with respect to the unknown relative magnitude of the singlet and triplet contributions to the superconducting order parameter, revealing a large variety of characteristic fingerprints of the underlying condensate.
We discuss a novel physical mechanism which gives rise to a giant magnetoconductivity in non-centrosymmetric superconducting films. This mechanism is caused by a combination of spin-orbit interaction and inversion symmetry breaking in the system, and arises in the presence of an in-plane magnetic field ${bf H}_|$. It produces a contribution to the conductivity, which displays a strong dependence on the angle between the electric field ${bf E}$ and ${bf H}_|$, and is proportional to the inelastic relaxation time of quasiparticles. Since in typical situations the latter is much larger than the elastic one this contribution can be much larger than the conventional conductivity thus leading to giant microwave absorption.
In this chapter we discuss the physical properties of a particular family of non-centrosymmetric superconductors belonging to the class heavy-fermion compounds. This group includes the ferromagnet UIr and the antiferromagnets CeRhSi3, CeIrSi3, CeCoGe3, CeIrGe3 and CePt3Si, of which all but CePt3Si become superconducting only under pressure. Each of these superconductors has intriguing and interesting properties. We first analyze CePt3Si, then review CeRhSi3, CeIrSi3, CeCoGe3 and CeIrGe3, which are very similar to each other in their magnetic and electrical properties, and finally discuss UIr. For each material we discuss the crystal structure, magnetic order, occurrence of superconductivity, phase diagram, characteristic parameters, superconducting properties and pairing states. We present an overview of the similarities and differences between all these six compounds at the end.
Iron-based superconducting layered compounds have the second highest transition temperature after cuprate superconductors. Their discovery is a milestone in the history of high-temperature superconductivity and will have profound implications for high-temperature superconducting mechanism as well as industrial applications. Raman scattering has been extensively applied to correlated electron systems including the new superconductors due to its unique ability to probe multiple primary excitations and their coupling. In this review, we will give a brief summary of the existing Raman experiments in the iron-based materials and their implication for pairing mechanism in particular. And we will also address some open issues from the experiments.
We present Raman experiments on underdoped and overdoped Bi2Sr2CaCu2O(8+d) (Bi-2212) single crystals. We reveal the pseudogap in the electronic Raman spectra in the B1g and B2g geometries. In these geometries we probe respectively, the antinodal (AN) and nodal (N) regions corresponding to the principal axes and the diagonal of the Brillouin zone. The pseudogap appears in underdoped regime and manifests itself in the B1g spectra by a strong depletion of the low energy electronic continuum as the temperature decreases. We define a temperature T* below which the depletion appears and the pseudogap energy, omegaPG the energy at which the depeletion closes. The pseudogap is also present in the B2g spectra but the depletion opens at higher energy than in the B1g spectra. We observe the creation of new electronic states inside the depletion as we enter the superconducting phase. This leads us to conclude (as proposed by S. Sakai et al.) that the pseudogap has a different structure than the superconducting gap and competes with it. We show that the nodal quasiparticle dynamic is very robust and almost insensitive to the pseudogap phase contrary to the antinodal quasiparticle dynamic. We finally reveal, in contrast to what it is usually admitted,an increase of the nodal quasiparticle spectral weight with underdoping. We interpret this result as the consequence of a possible Fermi surface disturbances in the doping range p=0.1-0.2.
We formulate a kinetic theory for non-centrosymmetric superconductors at low temperatures in the clean limit. The transport equations are solved quite generally in spin- and particle-hole (Nambu) space by performing first a transformation into the band basis and second a Bogoliubov transformation to the quasiparticle-quasihole phase space. Our result is a particle-hole-symmetric, gauge-invariant and charge conserving description, which is valid in the whole quasiclassical regime. We calculate the current response, the specific heat capacity, and the Raman response function. For the Raman case, we investigate within this framework the polarization-dependence of the electronic (pair-breaking) Raman response for the recently discovered non-centrosymmetric superconductors at zero temperature. Possible applications include the systems CePt$_3$Si and Li$_2$Pd$_x$Pt$_{3-x}$B, which reflect the two important classes of the involved spin-orbit coupling. We provide analytical expressions for the Raman vertices for these two classes and calculate the polarization-dependence of the electronic spectra. We predict a two-peak structure and different power laws with respect to the unknown relative magnitude of the singlet and triplet contributions to the superconducting order parameter, revealing a large variety of characteristic fingerprints of the underlying condensate.