Surface-induced vortex core restructuring in a spin-triplet superfluid

Abstract

Observing the structure of quantized vortices can provide evidence for the pairing nature of a superfluid or superconductor and pinpoint its order parameter. Spin-triplet superfluid $^3$He supports a variety of vortices, calculated and identified so far in bulk fluid. We show numerically that the vortex core in $^3$He is strongly altered near a surface, resulting in a structure inhomogeneous along the vortex line. The effect is asymmetric with respect to the relative orientation of the core order parameter anisotropy axis and the surface normal. In a wide range of external conditions, the vortex structure at the surface is found to be completely different from that in bulk. The effect originates from the combination of spin-orbit interaction in triplet pairing with the symmetry breaking by the surface. As an implication, surface-limited vortex core observations in a triplet-candidate system may not reflect the bulk structure. We propose an experimental verification of the effect by measuring a transition in the vortex structure in thin slabs of superfluid $^3$He-B.