Revisiting vestigial order in nematic superconductors: Gauge-field mechanisms and model constraints
Bibliographic record
Abstract
An electronic nematic order that originates from superconducting fluctuation but persists above the superconducting transition temperature is often referred to as a vestigial nematic phase. Such a vestigial order belongs to the broader class of composite orders discussed in earlier literature, characterized by ordering in gauge-invariant combinations of superconducting order parameters while the individual superconducting order parameters remain disordered. These states include metallic superfluids, paired phases, and composite (charge-4e) superconductors. Whether and under what conditions such a vestigial phase can emerge in realistic models of nematic superconductors remains an open question. Recent analytical work [P. T. How and S. K. Yip, Phys. Rev. B 107, 104514 (2023)] concluded that vestigial nematic phases--and related mechanisms--do not appear in the widely studied models proposed for, e.g., Bi$_2$Se$_3$-based candidates. To shed light on this question, we perform large-scale Monte Carlo simulations of a three-dimensional Ginzburg-Landau model of a nematic superconductor. Consistent with the findings of How and Yip, our numerical results confirm that commonly considered models do not exhibit vestigial nematic phases or nematic-fluctuation-induced charge-4e superconductivity. Extending the analysis to include coupling to a gauge field, we show that vestigial nematic order can, under restrictive conditions, be stabilized through an alternative mechanism: intercomponent coupling mediated by the gauge field or the effects of strong correlations.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".