Intrinsic thermal Hall conductivity in the mixed state of d-wave superconductors: from wavepacket dynamics to scaling

Abstract

Recent numerical calculation of the intrinsic thermal Hall conductivity of nodal d-wave superconductors in the mixed state revealed a rapid increase of this quantity above an onset temperature. Interestingly, this defines a measurable energy scale in an otherwise gapless state. Using the mathematics of magnetic coherent states, in this paper such energy scale is related to a dynamical process associated with the Andreev scattering of an electron wavepacket moving along the constant energy contours in the momentum space. This energy scale is then used to obtain an improved scaling collapse of numerically calculated thermal Hall conductivity in a tight-binding model as a function of temperature, magnetic field and the d-wave pairing amplitude at various band fillings. The results indicate that the mentioned onset temperature is associated with the ability of the quasiparticle wavepacket to complete its semiclassical orbit before it is appreciably scattered by the superconducting condensate.