How magnetic field can transform a superconductor into a Bose metal

Abstract

We discuss whether a simple theory of superconducting stripes coupled by Josephson tunneling can describe a metallic transport, once the coherent tunneling of pairs is suppressed by the magnetic field. For a clean system, the conclusion we reached is negative: the excitation spectrum of preformed pairs consists of Landau levels, and once the magnetic field exceeds a critical value, the transport becomes insulating. As a speculation, we suggest that a Bose metal can exist in disordered systems provided that the disorder is strong enough to localize some pairs. Then the coupling between propagating and localized pairs broadens the Landau levels, resulting in a metallic conductivity. Our model respects the particle-hole symmetry, which leads to a zero Hall response. And intriguingly, the resulting anomalous metallic state has no Drude peak and the spectral weight of the cyclotron resonance vanishes at low temperatures.