Intrinsic superconducting diode effect in disordered systems

Abstract: Nonreciprocal transport phenomena have attracted much attention in modern condensed matter physics. In the field of superconductivity, the superconducting diode effect (SDE) has been one of the central topics. Recent theoretical studies for the SDE in intrinsic mechanism revealed the relation between the SDE and helical superconductivity, for which experimental clarification has been awaited. In this work, we establish a microscopic theory of the intrinsic SDE in disordered systems. We show that the sign reversal of the nonreciprocal critical current is suppressed under moderate impurity concentrations. However, even in the moderately disordered region, the SDE shows a feature signaling the change in the nature of helical superconductivity. It is also found that the diode quality factor $r$ is increased by disorders and reaches 20% in the Rashba-Zeeman model.