Recently, superconductivity has been discovered in rock-salt structured binary lanthanum monoxide LaO through state-of-the-art oxide thin-film epitaxy. In this work, we reveal that the normal state of superconducting LaO is a $Z_2$ nontrivial topological metal, where the Dirac point protected by the crystal symmetry is located around the Fermi energy. By analysing the orbital characteristics, we show that the nature of the topological band structure of LaO originates from the intra-atomic transition from the outer shell La 5$d$ to the inner shell 4$f$ orbitals driven by the strong octahedral crystal-field. Furthermore, the appearance of novel surface states unambiguously demonstrates the topological signature of LaO superconductor. Our theoretical findings not only shed new light into the understanding of the exotic quantum behaviors in LaO superconductor with intimate correlation between 4$f$ and 5$d$ orbitals in La, but also provide an exciting platform to explore the interplay between nontrivial topology and superconductivity.
Unconventional high-energy-state contribution to the Cooper pairing in under-doped copper-oxide superconductor HgBa$_2$Ca$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{8+δ}$
本文研究了低掺杂HgBa $_2$ Ca $_2$ Cu $_3$ O $_{8+δ}$超导单晶的B1 g电子喇曼响应，超导临界温度Tc=122 K.我们的主要发现是超导对断裂峰与其高能侧的下降有关，在Tc处一起消失。这一结果暗示了一种非常规的配对机制，而在下降中损失的光谱重量被转移到较低能量的配对断裂峰。这一结论得到了基于哈伯德模型的细胞动力学平均场论的支持，该模型能够再现B1 g拉曼响应的所有主要特征，并根据超导和赝能隙之间的非平凡关系解释峰-谷行为。
