Effect of surface Andreev bound states on the Bean-Livingston barrier in d-wave superconductors

Iniotakis C, Dahm T, Schopohl N. Effect of surface Andreev bound states on the Bean-Livingston barrier in d-wave superconductors. Physical Review Letters. 2008;100(3): 37002.We study the influence of surface Andreev bound states in d-wave superconductors on the Bean-Livingston surface barrier for entry of a vortex line into a strongly type-II superconductor. Starting from Eilenberger theory, we derive a generalization of London theory to incorporate the anomalous surface currents arising from the Andreev bound states. This allows us to find an analytical expression for the modification of the Bean-Livingston barrier in terms of a single parameter describing the influence of the Andreev bound states. We find that the field of first vortex entry is significantly enhanced. Also, the depinning field for vortices near the surface is renormalized. Both effects are temperature dependent and depend on the orientation of the surface relative to the d-wave gap