Protected superconductivity at the boundaries of charge-density-wave domains

Brigitte C. Leridon (1) , Sergio Caprara (2, 3) , Johan Vanacken (4) , V. V. Moshchalkov (4) , Baptiste Vignolle (5) , Rajni Porwal (6) , R. C. Budhani (6) , Alessandro Attanasi (2, 3) , Marco Grilli (2, 3) , José Lorenzana (2, 3)

1 LPEM - Laboratoire de Physique et d'Etude des Matériaux (UMR 8213)
2 Department of Physics
3 CNR - ISC - Institute for Complex Systems [Rome]
4 KU Leuven - Catholic University of Leuven = Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
5 LNCMI-G - Laboratoire national des champs magnétiques intenses - Grenoble
6 CSIR National Physical Laboratory [New Delhi]

Solid 4He may acquire superfluid characteristics due to the frustration of the solid phase at grain boundaries. Here, we show that an analogous effect occurs in systems with competition among charge-density-waves (CDWs) and superconductivity in the presence of disorder, as cuprate or dichalcogenide superconductors. The CDWs breaks apart in domains with topologically protected filamentary superconductivity (FSC) at the interfaces. Transport experiments carried out in underdoped cuprates with the magnetic field acting as a control parameter are shown to be in excellent agreement with the theoretical expectation. At high temperature and low fields we find a transition from CDWs to fluctuating superconductivity, weakly affected by disorder, while at high field and low temperature the protected filamentary superconducting phase appears in close analogy with "glassy" supersolid phenomena in 4He.

Mots clés: high-T c superconductivity; charge-density-wave; filamentary superconductivity; magnetotransport; disorder

Domaines: Matériaux

Brigitte C. Leridon, Sergio Caprara, Johan Vanacken, V. V. Moshchalkov, Baptiste Vignolle, et al.. Protected superconductivity at the boundaries of charge-density-wave domains. New Journal of Physics, 2020, 22 (7), pp.073025. ⟨10.1088/1367-2630/ab976e⟩. ⟨hal-02930932⟩