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arXiv · 2610.36358

Vortex anisotropy in chiral and nematic superconductors with strain

David Shuliutsky·Moshe Goldstein
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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-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.

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David Shuliutsky, Moshe Goldstein. 2026-10-26. Vortex anisotropy in chiral and nematic superconductors with strain. https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.36358

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