Abstract
Recent work done on the time reversal symmetry (TRS) breaking superconductors is reviewed in this paper. The special attention is paid to Sr 2 RuO 4 believed to be spin triplet chiral p-wave superconductor which break TRS and is expected to posses non-trivial topological properties. The family of TRS breaking superconductors is growing relatively fast, with many of its newly discovered members being non-centrosymmetric. However not only Sr 2 RuO 4 but also many other superconductors which possess center of inversion also break TRS. The TRS is often identified by means of the muon spin relaxation ( μ SR) and the Kerr effect. Both methods effectively measure the appearance of the spontaneous bulk magnetic field below superconducting transition temperature. This compound provides an example of the material whose many band, multi-condensate modeling has enjoyed a number of successes, but the full understanding has not been achieved yet. We discuss in some details the properties of the material. Among them is the Kerr effect and by understanding has resulted in the discovery of the novel mechanism of the phenomenon. The mechanism is universal and thus applicable to all systems with multi-orbital character of states at the Fermi energy.
Highlights
Discovery of the high-temperature superconductors [1] a few decades ago has started a vivid and still ongoing experimental and theoretical race to uncover their secrets
We have reviewed aspects related to time reversal symmetry (TRS) breaking in superconductors including Sr2RuO4, UPt3, and other newly discovered systems
This calls for better understanding of the interplay between various symmetries in superconductors
Summary
Discovery of the high-temperature superconductors [1] a few decades ago has started a vivid and still ongoing experimental and theoretical race to uncover their secrets. One of the best-known examples of TRS breaking superconductors is Sr2RuO4 This material is believed to have the spin-triplet odd parity superconducting order parameter with d vector along the c-crystallographic axis d(k) ∼ (kx ± iky)ez. Predicted by the Ettore Majorana, they have never been observed in vacuum [14], but have been proposed to exist in chiral superconductors as a zero energy modes This makes chiral superconductors important examples of topologically non-trivial systems. Due to their non-abelian statistics, Majorana fermions may find applications in the context of quantum computing [15] It is mainly Sr2RuO4 which is considered an important example of the system with chiral order parameters which break TRS.
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