Unexpected impact of magnetic disorder on multiband superconductivity

Abstract

We analyze how the magnetic disorder affects the properties of the two-band s± and s++ models, which are the subject of discussions regarding iron-based superconductors and other multiband systems like MgB2. We show that there are several cases when the transition temperature Tc is not fully suppressed by magnetic impurities in contrast to the Abrikosov-Gor'kov theory, but a saturation of Tc takes place in the regime of strong disorder. These cases are: (1) the purely interband impurity scattering and (2) the unitary scattering limit. We show that in the former case the s± gap is preserved, while the s++ state transforms into the s± state with increasing magnetic disorder. For case (2), the gap structure remains intact.