Vortex anisotropy in chiral and nematic superconductors with strain
Abstract
Unconventional superconductors with a two-component order parameter support the existence of a rotational symmetry breaking nematic phase and a time-reversal symmetry breaking chiral phase. A recent experiment on 4Hb-TaS2 surprisingly shows both twofold anisotropy in Hc2, which suggests nematic superconductivity, as well as isotropic vortices at low temperatures, which suggest chiral superconductivity. To resolve this apparent conundrum we write down the appropriate Ginzburg-Landau equations and develop a numerically efficient algorithm for finding vortex solutions, allowing us to study their shape and anisotropy over a broad parameter range. We also demonstrate analytically that, to leading order, the vortex anisotropy is independent of strain in the nematic case, but is linearly dependent on it in the chiral phase, providing a possible way to distinguish the two phases. Using all these results we show that, in the presence of strain, in a large parameter regime the system behaves nematically near the transition, leading to an anisotropy of Hc2, but is dominantly chiral away from the transition, leading to parametrically smaller vortex anisotropy, in line with the experiment.
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BibTeX
@misc{shuliutsky2026vortex,
title = {{Vortex anisotropy in chiral and nematic superconductors with strain}},
author = {David Shuliutsky and Moshe Goldstein},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.36358},
eprint = {2610.36358},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.36358},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Vortex anisotropy in chiral and nematic superconductors with strain
AU - David Shuliutsky
AU - Moshe Goldstein
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/26
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.36358
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.36358
AB - Unconventional superconductors with a two-component order parameter support the existence of a rotational symmetry breaking nematic phase and a time-reversal symmetry breaking chiral phase. A recent experiment on 4Hb-TaS_2 surprisingly shows both twofold anisotropy in H_c2, which suggests nematic superconductivity, as well as isotropic vortices at low temperatures, which suggest chiral superconductivity. To resolve this apparent conundrum we write down the appropriate Ginzburg-Landau equations and develop a numerically efficient algorithm for finding vortex solutions, allowing us to study their shape and anisotropy over a broad parameter range. We also demonstrate analytically that, to leading order, the vortex anisotropy is independent of strain in the nematic case, but is linearly dependent on it in the chiral phase, providing a possible way to distinguish the two phases. Using all these results we show that, in the presence of strain, in a large parameter regime the system behaves nematically near the transition, leading to an anisotropy of H_c2, but is dominantly chiral away from the transition, leading to parametrically smaller vortex anisotropy, in line with the experiment.
ER -