Detecting competing orders through the edge states in the heterostructures with high-Tc superconductors

Abstract

We here propose a feasible method to detect hidden orders in high-Tc superconductors. When we consider a d-wave superconductor being in proximity to a two-dimensional Weyl model, a topological superconductor with gapless edge states may be realized. The system can become topologically trivial when an additional d-density-wave order is also included. The edge states become gapped and may be detected in experiments. For this, the d-density-wave order can be detected experimentally, and different scenarios for the pseudogap in high-Tc superconductors may be distinguished. This method may be used to detect various hidden orders through putting high-Tc superconductors being in proximity to designated topologically nontrivial materials.