Upper critical field for cobalt oxide superconductors

Abstract

Motivated by the recent discovery of the cobalt oxide superconductors, we calculate the temperature dependence of the upper critical field on a triangular lattice. Using the lattice version of the Gor'kov equations we investigate how the applied magnetic field affects singlet and triplet types of superconductivity. We show that in a wide range of model parameters not only Zeeman coupling, but also the diamagnetic pair breaking mechanism favors the triplet pairing. In the cobalt oxide superconductors the symmetry of the order parameter remains an open problem and both singlet and triplet superconductivity should be taken into account. We show that in such a case, an external magnetic field may induce a transition from singlet to triplet superconductivity. We discuss experimental results which may confirm this tempting hypothesis.