Enhancement of the upper critical field and a field-induced superconductivity in antiferromagnetic conductors

Abstract

We propose a mechanism by which the paramagnetic pair-breaking effect is largely reduced in superconductors with coexisting antiferromagnetic long- range and short-range orders. The mechanism is an extension of the Jaccarino and Peter mechanism to antiferromagnetic conductors, but the resultant phase diagram is quite different. In order to illustrate the mechanism, we examine a model which consists of mobile electrons and antiferromagnetically correlated localized spins with Kondo coupling between them. It is found that for weak Kondo coupling, the superconductivity occurs over an extraordinarily wide region of the magnetic field including zero field. The critical field exceeds the Chandrasekhar and Clogston limit, but there is no lower limit in contrast to the Jaccarino and Peter mechanism. On the other hand, for strong Kondo coupling, both the low-field superconductivity and a field-induced superconductivity occur. Possibilities in hybrid ruthenate cuprate superconductors and some organic superconductors are discussed.