In this work, we study a molecular graphene model on the top of a superconductor in the presence of pseudomagnetic fields induced by coplanar strain fields. With the pseudomagnetic fields and the attractive interaction induced from the substrate, a flat band superconductor can be achieved according to mean field analysis on the effective Hamiltonian. Based on a semiclassical approximation, we first show that the orbital limit is hugely enhanced by the pseudomagnetic fields. The physical reason is that the orbital angular momenta locking at $K$ and $K'$ valleys due to the pseudomagnetic fields suppress the orbital magnetization from external magnetic fields. Considering the vanishing band width in this system, we then study the effects of Gaussian fluctuations in both Hartree and pairing channels. We show that in the dilute limit, the phase transition is dominated by collective modes with critical temperatures much lower than the mean field results. At half filling, our method gives no corrections to the mean field critical temperatures.
The superconducting s-wave state in Weyl semimetals in a strong strain-induced pseudomagnetic field is investigated in a model with local four-fermion interaction. It is found that only the inter-node pairing is possible in the lowest pseudo-Landau level approximation. Unlike the case of the lowest Landau level in a conventional magnetic field, the corresponding gap equation has only a trivial solution. Nevertheless, superconductivity can be induced via the proximity effect with a usual s-wave spin-singlet superconductor. Since a pseudomagnetic field is present necessarily at the surface of a …
We study surface zero-energy flat bands in three-dimensional chiral superconductors with $p_z (p_x +ip_y)^ν$-wave pairing symmetry ($ν$ is a nonzero integer), based on topological numbers and tunneling conductance. It is shown that the surface flat bands are fragile against (i) the misorientation angle and (ii) surface Rashba spin-orbit interaction. The fragility of (i) is specific to chiral SCs, whereas that of (ii) happens for general odd-parity SCs. We demonstrate that these flat band instabilities vanish or suppress a zero-bias conductance peak in a normal/insulator/superconductor junction…
Line nodes in the superconducting gap are known to be a source of Majorana flat bands (MFBs) in time-reversal-invariant superconductors (SCs). Here, we extend this relation to all symmetry-protected line nodes where an additional constraint arising from a symmetry of the crystal destabilizes or hides the existence of MFBs. By establishing a one-to-one correspondence between group theoretical and topological classifications, we are able to classify the possible line-node-induced MFBs, including cases with (magnetic) non-symmorphic space groups. Our theoretical analysis reveals a new type of MFB…
We present exact results that give insight into how interactions lead to transport and superconductivity in a flat band where the electrons have no kinetic energy. We obtain bounds for the optical spectral weight for flat band superconductors, that lead to upper bounds for the superfluid stiffness and the 2D $T_c$. We focus on on-site attraction $|U|$ on the Lieb lattice with trivial flat bands and on the $π$-flux model with topological flat bands. For trivial flat bands, the low-energy optical spectral weight $\widetilde{D}_\text{low} \leq \widetilde{n} |U| Ω/2$ with $\widetilde{n} = \min\lef…
The internal magnetic field distribution in a mixed state of a cuprate superconductor, Ca$_{2-x}$Na$_x$CuO$_2$Cl$_2$ ($T_{\rm c}\simeq28.5$ K, near the optimal doping), was measured by muon spin rotation ($μ$SR) technique up to 60 kOe. The $μ$SR linewidth $Λ(B)$ which exhibits excess broadening at higher fields ($B>5$ kOe) due to field-induced magnetism (FIM), is described by a relation, $Λ(B)\propto\sqrt{B}$. This suggests that the orbital current and associated quasiparticle excitation plays predominant roles in stabilizing the quasistatic correlation. Moreover, a slowing down of the vortex …
Nodal topological superconductors display zero-energy Majorana flat bands at generic edges. The flatness of these edge bands, which is protected by time-reversal and translation symmetry, gives rise to an extensive ground-state degeneracy. Therefore, even arbitrarily weak interactions lead to an instability of the flat-band edge states towards time-reversal and translation-symmetry-broken phases, which lift the ground-state degeneracy. We examine the instabilities of the flat-band edge states of d_{xy}-wave superconductors by performing a mean-field analysis in the Majorana basis of the edge s…
We examine the topological properties of a spin-singlet superconductor with Rashba and Dresselhaus (110) spin-orbit couplings. We demonstrate that there are several topological invariants in the Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) Hamiltonian by symmetry analysis. We use the Pfaffian invariant $\mathcal{P}$ for the particle-hole symmetry to demonstrate all the possible phase diagrams of the BdG Hamiltonian. We find that the edge spectrum is either Dirac cone or flat band which supports the emergence of the Majorana fermion in this system. For the Majorana flat bands, a higher symmetric BdG Hamiltonian …
Motivated by the experimental progress in controlling the properties of the energy bands in superconductors, significant theoretical efforts have been devoted to study the effect of the quantum geometry and the flatness of the dispersion on the superfluid weight. In conventional superconductors, where the energy bands are wide and the Fermi energy is large, the contribution due to the quantum geometry is negligible, but in the opposite limit of flat-band superconductors the superfluid weight originates purely from the quantum geometry of Bloch wave functions. Here, we study how the energy band…
A kagome lattice naturally features Dirac fermions, flat bands and van Hove singularities in its electronic structure. The Dirac fermions encode topology, flat bands favour correlated phenomena such as magnetism, and van Hove singularities can lead to instabilities towards long-range many-body orders, altogether allowing for the realization and discovery of a series of topological kagome magnets and superconductors with exotic properties. Recent progress in exploring kagome materials has revealed rich emergent phenomena resulting from the quantum interactions between geometry, topology, spin a…
Flat bands and distinct density wave orders in correlated Kagome superconductor CsCr$_3$Sb$_5$
University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）；Fuzhou University（福州大学）；Beijing Institute of Technology（北京理工大学）；Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院上海高等研究院）；National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory and School of Nuclear Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学核科学与技术学院/国家同步辐射实验室）；SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory（斯坦福直线加速器中心）
Hysteretic ac losses in a thin, current-carrying superconductor strip located between two flat magnetic shields of infinite permeability are calculated using Bean's model of the critical state. For the shields oriented parallel to the plane of the strip, penetration of the self-induced magnetic field is enhanced, and the current dependence of the ac loss resembles that in an isolated superconductor slab, whereas for the shields oriented perpendicular to the plane of the strip, penetration of the self-induced magnetic field is impaired, and the current dependence of the ac loss is similar to th…
We study nondegenerate flat bands at the surfaces of noncentrosymmetric topological superconductors by exact diagonalization of Bogoliubov-de Gennes Hamiltonians. We show that these states are strongly spin polarized, and acquire a chiral dispersion when placed in contact with a ferromagnetic insulator. This chiral mode carries a large edge current which displays a singular dependence on the exchange-field strength. The contribution of other edge states to the current is comparably weak. We hence propose that the observation of the edge current can serve as a test of the presence of nondegener…
It has been noted that certain surfaces of Weyl semimetals have bound states forming open Fermi arcs, which are never seen in typical metallic states. We show that the Fermi arcs enable them to support an even more exotic surface state with crossed flat bands in the superconducting state. We clarify the topological origin of the crossed flat bands and the relevant symmetry that stabilizes the cross point. We also discuss their possible experimental verification by tunneling spectroscopy.
We discuss the symmetry property of a nodal superconductor that hosts robust flat-band zero-energy states at its surface under potential disorder. Such robust zero-energy states are known to induce the anomalous proximity effect in a dirty normal metal attached to a superconductor. A recent study has shown that a topological index ${\cal N}_\mathrm{ZES}$ describes the number of zero-energy states at the dirty surface of a $p$-wave superconductor. We generalize the theory to clarify the conditions required for a superconductor that enables ${\cal N}_\mathrm{ZES}\neq 0$. Our results show that ${…
We present a theoretical study of flat-band superconductivity for fully spin-polarized triplet pairing with $p$-wave symmetry. We consider the effect of disorder and calculate the disorder-averaged Green's functions diagrammatically in first-order Born approximation. In the clean limit, we find that, similarly to the case of $s$-wave pairing in a flat-band, both the gap and the critical temperature depend linearly on the attractive interaction strength. We derive the critical-temperature suppression formula for the flat-band case and find that $p$-wave flat-band superconductivity is more robus…
In a flat band superconductor, the charge carriers' group velocity vF is extremely slow, quenching their kinetic energy. The emergence of superconductivity thus appears paradoxical, as conventional BCS theory implies a vanishing coherence length, superfluid stiffness, and critical current. Here, using twisted bilayer graphene (tBLG), we explore the profound effect of vanishingly small vF in a Dirac superconducting flat band system Using Schwinger-limited non-linear transport studies, we demonstrate an extremely slow vF ~ 1000 m/s for filling fraction nu between -1/2 and -3/4 of the moire super…
In mean-field descriptions of nodal d-wave superconductors, generic edges exhibit dispersionless Majorana fermion bands at zero-energy. These states give rise to an extensive ground-state degeneracy, and are protected by time-reversal (TR) symmetry. We argue that the infinite density of states of these flat-bands make them inherently unstable to interactions, and show that repulsive interactions lead to edge FM which splits the flat bands. This edge FM offers an explanation for the observation of splitting of zero-bias peaks in edge tunneling in High-Tc cuprate superconductors. We argue that t…
Exotic excitations arise at the interface between a three-dimensional topological insulator (TI) and superconductors. For example, Majorana fermions with a linear dispersion, $E\sim k$, exist in a short $π$ Josephson junction on the TI surface. We show that in these systems, the Andreev bound states spectrum becomes nearly flat at zero energy when the chemical potential is sufficiently away from the Dirac point. The flat dispersion is well approximated by $E\sim k^N$, where $N$ scales with the chemical potential. Similar evolution from linear to flat dispersion also occurs for the subgap spect…
Beyond the two-dimensional (2D) saddle-point Van Hove singularities (VHSs) with logarithmic divergences in the density of states (DOS), recent studies have identified higher-order VHSs with faster-than-logarithmic divergences that can amplify electron correlation effects. Here we show that the cuprate high-Tc superconductors harbor high-order VHSs in their electronic spectra and unveil a new correlation that the cuprates with high-order VHSs display higher Tc. Our analysis indicates that the normal and higher-order VHSs can provide a straightforward new marker for identifying propensity of a m…
In this paper we find that confining a second-order topological superconductor with a harmonic potential leads to a proliferation of Majorana corner modes. As a consequence, this results in the formation of Majorana corner flat bands which have a fundamentally different origin from that of the conventional mechanism. This is due to the fact that they arise solely from the one-dimensional gapped boundary states of the hybrid system that become gapless without the bulk gap closing under the increase of the trapping potential magnitude. The Majorana corner states are found to be robust against th…
Nodal topological superconductors characterized by $p_x$-wave pairing symmetry host flat-band Majorana bound states causing drastic anomalies in low-energy electromagnetic responses. Nevertheless, the study of flat-band Majorana bound states has been at a standstill owing to a serious lack of candidate materials for $p_x$-wave superconductors. In this paper, by expanding a scheme of planar topological Josephson junctions, we propose a promising device realizing an effective $p_x$-wave superconductor. Specifically, we consider a three-dimensional Josephson junction consisting of a thin-film sem…
A spin-U(1)-symmetry protected momentum-dependent integer-$Z$-valued topological invariant is proposed to time-reversal-invariant (TRI) superconductivity (SC) whose nonzero value will lead to exactly flat surface band(s). The theory is applied to the weakly spin-orbit coupled quasi-1D A$_2$Cr$_3$As$_3$ (A=Na, K, Rb, Cs) superconductors family with highest $T_c$ up to 8.6 K with $p_z$-wave pairing in the $S_z=0$ channel. It's found that up to the leading atomic spin-orbit-coupling (SOC), the whole (001) surface Brillouin zone is covered with exactly-flat surface bands, with some regime hosting …
Epitaxial growth of Fe-based superconductors such as Co-doped SrFe$_2$As$_2$ (SrFe$_2$As$_2$:Co) was reported recently, but has still insufficient properties for device application because they have rough surfaces and are decomposed by reactions with water vapor in an ambient atmosphere. This letter reports that epitaxial films of Co-doped BaFe$_2$As$_2$ grown at 700 oC show the onset superconducting transition tempearture of 20 K. The transition is sharper than those observed on the SrFe$_2$As$_2$:Co films, which would originate from their improved crystallinity. These films also have atomica…
We consider the interplay of disorder and interactions upon the gapless surface states of 3D topological superconductors. The combination of topology and superconducting order inverts the action of time-reversal symmetry, so that extrinsic time-reversal invariant surface perturbations appear only as "pseudomagnetic" fields (abelian and non-abelian vector potentials, which couple to spin and valley currents). The main effect of disorder is to induce multifractal scaling in surface state wavefunctions. These critically delocalized, yet strongly inhomogeneous states renormalize interaction matrix…
We study a two-dimensional model of an isolated narrow topological band at partial filling with local attractive interactions. Numerically exact quantum Monte Carlo calculations show that the ground state is a superconductor with a critical temperature that scales nearly linearly with the interaction strength. We also find a broad pseudogap regime at temperatures above the superconducting phase that exhibits strong pairing fluctuations and a tendency towards electronic phase separation; introducing a small nearest neighbor attraction suppresses superconductivity entirely and results in phase s…
We show that Majorana fermions associated with Majorana flat bands emerge as zero energy modes on the [110] edge of single layer or multilayer nodal superconductors with $d_{x^2-y^2}$-wave pairing and Rashba spin-orbit coupling. Moreover, as long as the global inversion symmetry of the single layer or multilayer superconductor is broken, and in the presence of an in-plane magnetic field parallel to the [110] edge, the Majorana fermions together with usual fermionic Andreev bound states induce a triple-peak structure in tunnelling spectroscopy experiments. Importantly, we show that the zero bia…
The diversity of emergent phenomena in quantum materials often arises from the interplay between different physical energy scales or broken symmetries. Cooperative interactions among them are rare; however, when they do occur, they often stabilize fundamentally new ground states or phase behaviors. For instance, a pair density wave can form when the superconducting order parameter borrows spatial periodical variation from charge order; a topological superconductor can arise when topologically nontrivial electronic states proximitize with or participate in the formation of the superconducting c…
We study a two-dimensional model of topological superconductor with equal spin pairing and repulsive Hubbard interaction. When the pairing gap equals to the hopping constant, half of the spectrum of this model are flat bands, which makes this model exact solvable. The band structure and topological properties of the exact solutions of the interacting model are analyzed in details. It is found that the ground state corresponds to a staggered distribution of the conserved quantities.
We study the fluctuations of the amplitude (i.e. the Higgs-Anderson) mode in a superconducting system of coupled Dirac particles proposed as a model for possible surface or interface superconductivity in rhombohedral graphite. We show that the absence of Fermi energy and vanishing of the excitation gap of the collective amplitude mode in the model leads to a large fluctuation contribution to thermodynamic quantities such as the heat capacity. As a consequence, the mean-field theory becomes inaccurate indicating that the interactions lead to a strongly correlated state. We also present a micros…
A d-Electron Heavy-Fermion-Like Superconductor with Frustration-Induced Flat Bands
University of Pittsburgh（匹兹堡大学）；Weizmann Institute of Science（魏茨曼科学研究所）；Ames National Laboratory（艾姆斯国家实验室）；Iowa State University（爱荷华州立大学）；Washington University at St. Louis（圣路易斯华盛顿大学）；University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学）；Oak Ridge National Laboratory（橡树岭国家实验室）；The Pennsylvania State University（宾夕法尼亚州立大学）
Recent experiments have revealed the evidence of nodal-line superconductivity in half-Heusler superconductors, e.g. YPtBi. Theories have suggested the topological nature of such nodal-line superconductivity and proposed the existence of surface Majorana flat bands on the (111) surface of half-Heusler superconductors. Due to the divergent density of states of the surface Majorana flat bands, the surface order parameter and the surface impurity play essential roles in determining the surface properties. In this work, we studied the effect of the surface order parameter and the surface impurity o…
The Chandrasekhar-Clogston limit normally places stringent conditions on the magnitude of the magnetic field that can coexist with spin-singlet superconductivity, restricting the critical induced Zeeman shift to a fraction of the superconducting gap. Here, we consider a model system where the spin-singlet Cooper pairing in a dispersive band crossing the Fermi level is boosted by an additional flat-band located away from the Fermi level. The boosting of the pairing in the dispersive band allows for nontrivial solutions to the coupled gap equations for spin-splitting fields considerably larger t…
We discuss an analytical model to calculate the superconducting volume ratio. Apart from this, our model can also predict the shape of embedded superconducting domains. We applied our model to calculate the superconducting volume ratios and shape of domains in (TMTSF)$_2$PF$_6$, (TMTSF)$_2$ClO$_4$, YBa$_2$Cu$_4$O$_8$, $β$-(BEDT)TTF$_2$I$_3$ and FeSe. Usually in layered superconductors resistivity drops anisotropically. Our analysis also explains that, this behaviour is due to flat or needle shape of the superconducting samples.
We demonstrate how the non-trivial interplay between spin-orbit coupling and nodeless $s$-wave superconductivity can drive a fully gapped two-band topological insulator into a time-reversal invariant gapless topological superconductor supporting symmetry-protected Majorana flat bands. We characterize topological phase diagrams by a ${\mathbb Z}_2 \times{\mathbb Z}_2$ partial Berry-phase invariant, and show that, despite the trivial crystal geometry, no unique bulk-boundary correspondence exists. We trace this behavior to the anisotropic quasiparticle bulk gap closing, linear vs. quadratic, and…
Nodal superconductors without inversion symmetry exhibit nontrivial topological properties, manifested by topologically protected flat-band edge states. Here we study the effects of breaking translational symmetry, crucial to the definition of the topological invariant. We show using large-scale numerical simulations that bulk-edge correspondence remains valid in the presence of edge roughness and strong edge disorder. Moderately strong nonmagnetic disorder shifts some of the edge states away from zero energy, but does not change their total number. Strong spin-independent edge disorder, on th…
We discuss the stability of highly degenerate zero-energy states tha appear at the surface of a nodal superconductor preserving time-reversal symmetry. The existence of such surface states is a direct consequence of the nontrivial topological numbers defined in the restricted Brillouin zones in the clean limit. In experiments, however, potential disorder is inevitable near the surface of a real superconductor, which may lift the high degeneracy at zero energy. We show that an index defined in terms of the chiral eigenvalues of the zero-energy states can be used to measure the degree of degener…
We study two-dimensional noncentrosymmetric nodal superconductors under Zeeman field and clarify the field angle dependence of topological properties. It has been shown that the nodal excitation acquires an excitation gap due to the Zeeman field perpendicular to anti-symmetric spin-orbit coupling, and then gapful topological superconductivity is realized. We show that the system undergoes gapful-gapless transition against tilting of the field. The gapless phase remains to show a finite band gap and unusual Majorana edge states in between the bulk bands. The Majorana edge states naturally propa…
We study the proximity effect between an s-wave superconductor (SC) and the surface states of a Weyl semimetal. An interesting two-dimensional SC forms in such an interface with properties resembling in certain aspects the Fu-Kane superconductor with some notable differences. In a Weyl semimetal with unbroken time reversal symmetry the interface SC supports completely flat Majorana bands in a linear Josephson junction with a π phase difference. We discuss stability of these bands against disorder and propose ways in which they can be observed experimentally.
Nodal non-centrosymmetric superconductors (NCS) have recently been shown to be topologically non-trivial. An important consequence is the existence of topologically protected flat zero-energy surface bands, which are related to the topological characteristics of the line nodes of the bulk gap via a bulk-boundary correspondence [Schnyder and Ryu, arXiv:1011.1438]. In this paper we examine these zero-energy surface bands using a quasiclassical theory. We determine their spectrum and derive a general condition for their existence in terms of the sign change of the gap functions. A key experimenta…
