Model Evidence of a Superconducting State with a Full Energy Gap in Small Cuprate Islands

We investigate subdominant order parameters stabilizing at low temperatures in nanoscale high-Tc cuprate islands, motivated by the recent observation of a fully gapped state in nanosized YBa2Cu3O7-δ[D. Gustafsson et al., Nature Nanotech. 8, 25 (2013)]. Using complementary quasiclassical and tight-binding Bogoliubov–de Gennes methods, we show on distinctly different properties dependent on the symmetry being dx2-y2 þ is or dx2-y2 þ idxy. We find that a surface-induced dx2-y2 þ is phase creates a global spectroscopic gap which increases with an applied magnetic field, consistent with experimental observation