Publication
Mechanisms of Spontaneous Current Generation in an Inhomogeneous D-Wave Superconductor

M. H. S. Amin, et al.

A boundary between two d-wave superconductors or an s-wave and a d-wave superconductor generally breaks time-reversal symmetry and can generate spontaneous currents due to the proximity effect. On the other hand, surfaces and interfaces in d-wave superconductors can produce localized current-carrying states by supporting the T-breaking combination of dominant and subdominant order parameters. We investigate spontaneous currents in the presence of both mechanisms and show that at low temperature, counter-intuitively, the subdominant coupling decreases the amplitude of the spontaneous current due to the proximity effect. Superscreening of spontaneous currents is demonstrated to be present in any d-d (but not s-d) junction and surface with d+id' order parameter symmetry. We show that this supercreening is the result of contributions from the local magnetic moment of the condensate to the spontaneous current.