# Van Hove Singularity and Superconductivity in Disordered Sr2RuO4

## I Introduction

The perovskite structure of Strontium Ruthenate, Sr<sub>2</sub>RuO<sub>4</sub> is very similar to that of HTS copper oxides. However, its superconducting transition temperature T<sub>C</sub> is relatively low (T<sub>C</sub> $``$ 1 K) . Nevertheless, recent reports indicate that its Cooper pairs are not of the usual s–wave symmetry. In fact they suggest that this material features triplet pairing and is a superconducting analogue of the <sup>3</sup>He superfluid system \[1-4\]. Clearly, the possibility of exotic pairing engenders interest in the effects of disorder on the superconducting properties. Moreover, studies of the electronic structure  have identified an extended van Hove singularity close to the Fermi energy E<sub>F</sub>, and therefore one may wonder whether the van Hove scenario could lead to a rise in T<sub>C</sub> with doping. Evidently, since doping the system always increases the disorder one should investigate both aspects simultaneously.

## II The Model

We base our discussion on the extended negative U Hubbard Hamiltonian:

$$H=\underset{ij\sigma }{}t_{ij}c_{i\sigma }^{}c_{j\sigma }+\frac{1}{2}\underset{ij}{}U_{ij}\widehat{n}_i\widehat{n}_j\underset{i}{}(\mu \epsilon _i)\widehat{n}_i,$$
(1)   
where $`\widehat{n}_i=\widehat{n}_i+\widehat{n}_i`$ and $`\widehat{n}_{i\sigma }`$ is the usual, site occupational number operator $`c_{i\sigma }^{}c_{i\sigma }.`$ Evidently the above $`\widehat{n}_i`$ is the charge operator on site labelled $`i`$, $`\mu `$ is the chemical potential, which at $`T=0`$ is equal to Fermi energy $`E_F`$. Disorder is introduced into the problem by allowing the local site energy $`\epsilon _i`$ to vary randomly from site to site. Finally, $`c_{i\sigma }^{}`$ and $`c_{i\sigma }`$ are the Fermion creation and annihilation operators for an electron on site $`i`$ with spin $`\sigma `$, $`t_{ij}`$ is the amplitude for hopping from site $`j`$ to site $`i`$ and $`U_{ij}`$ is the attractive interaction ($`ij`$) which causes superconductivity.

In the Hartree-Fock-Gorkov approximation the equation for the Green’s function $`𝑮(i,j;ı\omega _n)`$, corresponding to the Hamiltonian in Eq. 1, is given by:

$$\underset{l}{}\left[\begin{array}{cc}(ı\omega _n+\mu \epsilon _i)\delta _{il}+t_{il}& \mathrm{\Delta }_{il}\\ \mathrm{\Delta }_{il}^{}& (ı\omega _n\mu +\epsilon )\delta _{il}t_{il}\end{array}\right]𝑮(l,j;ı\omega _n)=\mathrm{𝟏}\delta _{ij},$$
(2)   
where $`\omega _n`$ is Matsubara frequency.Let us define the random potential $`𝑽^{\epsilon _i}`$ by:

$$𝑽^{\epsilon _i}=\left[\begin{array}{cc}\epsilon _i& 0\\ 0& \epsilon _i\end{array}\right],$$
(3)   
where $`\epsilon _i`$ is uniformly distributed on the energy interval $`[\frac{\delta }{2},\frac{\delta }{2}]`$. The Green’s function for an impurity, described by $`𝑽^{\epsilon _i}`$ in Eq. 3, embedded in the medium, described by $`𝚺(ı\omega _n)`$ is given by:

$$𝑮^{\epsilon _i}(i,i,ı\omega _n)=\{\mathrm{𝟏}𝑮^C(i,i,ı\omega _n)[𝑽^{\epsilon _i}𝚺(ı\omega _n)]\}^1𝑮^C(i,i,ı\omega _n),$$
(4)   
Following the usual CPA procedure we demand that the coherent potential Greens function $`𝑮^C(i,i;ı\omega _n)=(ı\omega _nϵ_k𝚺(ı\omega _n))^1`$ satisfy the relation:

$$𝑮^C(i,i,ı\omega _n)=𝑮^{\epsilon _i}(i,i,ı\omega _n)=\frac{1}{\delta }_{\delta /2}^{\delta /2}d\epsilon _i𝑮^{\epsilon _i}(i,i,ı\omega _n).$$
(5)   
Evidently, Eq. 5 completely determines, that is to say can be solved for, $`𝚺(ı\omega _n)`$.

Let us now proceed further with the CPA strategy  and determine the averaged Greens function matrix $`𝑮(i,j;ı\omega _n)`$ subject to the self consistency conditions:

$$\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}_{ij}=|U_{ij}|\frac{1}{\beta }\underset{n}{}\mathrm{e}^{ı\omega _n\eta }G_{12}(i,j;ı\omega _n),\overline{n}=\frac{2}{\beta }\underset{n}{}\mathrm{e}^{ı\omega _n\eta }G_{11}(i,i;ı\omega _n).$$
(6)   
In this paper we assumed nearest neighbour electron hopping and pairing on a two dimensional lattice. In Figure 1$`a`$ and $`b`$ we have presented Fermi surfaces for $`n=0.55`$ and $`n=1`$ respectively. The latter case correspond to the situation, where the Fermi Energy, $`E_F`$, is located exactly at the van Hove singularity.

## III Critical Temperature and Residual Resistivity

The linearised gap equation for the critical temperature T<sub>C</sub> of p-wave superconducting phase transition reads as follows :

$$1=|U|T_C\underset{n}{}\mathrm{e}^{ı\omega _n\eta }\frac{1}{N}\underset{\stackrel{}{k}}{}\frac{2(\mathrm{sin}k_x)^2}{(ı\omega _nϵ_\stackrel{}{k}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{11}(ı\omega _n))(ı\omega _n+ϵ_\stackrel{}{k}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{22}(ı\omega _n))}.$$
(7)   
A useful measure of disorder is the resistivity $`\rho `$. Thus we shall study the relationship between $`\rho `$ and T<sub>C</sub>. The Residual resistivity $`\rho `$ for low temperature can be obtained from The Kubo–Greenwood formula. For the disordered two dimensional systems at hand :

$$\rho =\left\{2\frac{\mathrm{e}^2}{\pi \mathrm{}c}\frac{1}{N}\underset{k}{}4(\mathrm{sin}k_x)^2t^2\left[\mathrm{Im}G_{11}^C(\stackrel{}{k},0)\right]^2\right\}^1,$$
(8)   
where e is the electron charge, $`\mathrm{}`$ is Plank constant and $`c`$ is the distance between RuO<sub>2</sub> planes.

In short, we have solved the CPA equations (Eqs. 4,5) for various system parameters (Eq. 1) and calculated both T<sub>C</sub> and residual resistivity $`\rho `$.

To illustrate how effective a van Hove singularity can be in raising T<sub>C</sub>, in Fig. 2$`a`$ we present T<sub>C</sub>, calculated for clean systems and normalised to its maximal value T$`{}_{}{}^{max}{}_{C}{}^{}`$, versus band filling $`n`$ for various values of $`U/t`$. Clearly, T<sub>C</sub> is peaked at $`n=1`$, where the Fermi energy $`E_F`$ is exactly at the van Hove singularity. For small enough interaction $`U`$ it is enlarged by a factor of 7. Going further we turn to our results for the disordered case. Thus, in Fig. 2$`b`$, we plotted T<sub>C</sub> versus residual resistivity $`\rho `$ as calculated by the CPA procedure described above. The parameters $`U/t=0.702`$ as well as band filling $`n=0.55`$ were chosen so that the T<sub>C</sub> vs. $`\rho `$ curve reproduce the experiments . Unlike the Born approximation limit, the CPA residual resestivity is dependent on the strength of disordered potential, $`\delta `$, nonlinearly. This is illustrated in Fig. 3$`a`$, where the different curves correspond to different band fillings $`n`$. The pronounced nonlinearity for n=1 is due to a van Hove singularity being near $`E_F`$. As shown in Fig. 3b this give rise to an interesting upturn as $`\rho 0`$ in the T<sub>C</sub> vs. $`\rho `$ plot.

## IV Remarks and Conclusions

Our results confirm that, similarly to d–wave superconductors , in the case of p–wave paring the critical temperature T<sub>C</sub> is very sensitive function of nonmagnetic diagonal disorder. Nevertheless, they sugest that in Sr<sub>2</sub>RuO<sub>4</sub> doping could lead to higher value of critical temperature T<sub>C</sub>. Here we used uniform distribution of site energy levels $`\epsilon _i`$ as the simplest model of disorder. Clearly further study of the problem would include a more sophisticated impurity model, and more realistic band structure.

## Acknowledgements

Authors would like to thank Dr A.M. Martin, Prof. K.I. Wysokiński for helpful discussions and Prof. A.P. Mackenzie for the experimental data. This work has been partially supported by KBN grant No. 2P03B05015 and EPSRC grant No. GR/L22454.