Phase solitons in a weakly coupled three-component superconductor

Abstract

Based on the phenomenological Ginzburg-Landau approach, we investigate phase solitonic states in a class of three-component superconductors for mesoscopic doubly connected geometry (thin-walled cylinder) in external magnetic fields. Analysis of the Gibbs free energy of the system shows that solitonic states in a three-component superconductor are thermodynamically metastable and separated from the ground state by a sizable energy. Our results demonstrate that despite the presence of a zoo of phase solitons states the earlier proposed method for the detection of BTRS (broken time-reversal symmetry) in multiband superconductors remains valid and useful.