Pair Breaking and Dimensionality in Spin-Orbit Coupled Superconductors.

The response of ultrathin superconducting materials under parallel magnetic fields is often leveraged to obtain insight into the nature of the condensate, including features attributable to unconventional forms of pairing. Despite there being multiple competing mechanisms responsible for suppressing superconductivity, it is common for these analyses to overlook certain depairing channels. Here, we report an analysis of thickness-dependent superconductivity in thin films of LaBi_{2} using the multimechanism Kharitonov-Feigel'man framework. By resolving field-enhanced superconductivity in the thin limit, we obtain an estimate the role of spin exchange scattering, in addition to paramagnetic and orbital effects. Our analyses offer insight into how fundamental quantities such as the critical temperature as well as Pauli limit are defined, recasting the landscape for how scattering times in two-dimensional superconductors can be interpreted.