Field-induced transition from chiral spin-triplet to mixed-parity Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov superconductivity

We analyze the response to a magnetic field of a two-dimensional spin-triplet superconductor with chiral order parameter when triplet pairing is closely competing with the singlet one. The study is performed via numerical solution of the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations, assuming that the translational symmetry is broken in one direction by the presence of an interface beyond which superconducting pairing is not effective. We show that as the intensity of the magnetic field is increased above a threshold value, the system undergoes a transition to a spatially inhomogeneous state of the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) type where chirality disappears and a singlet-triplet mixing takes place along the direction perpendicular to the interface. Subdominant singlet components are found to accompany the triplet dominant ones in both phases. They develop close to the interface at low fields, then turning continuously into oscillating long-range ones as the field is increased. A similar behavior is found for the magnetization. It nucleates at the interface in the chiral phase, then acquiring in the FFLO phase an oscillatory behavior reaching its maximum amplitude at the sites where the dominant triplet component has a node. At these sites, the local spin-resolved density of states exhibits strong resonances, associated with the formation of Andreev bound states, which tend to broaden and decay in intensity as increasingly high magnetic fields are considered.