Nematic and chiral superconductivity induced by odd-parity fluctuations

Abstract

Recent experiments indicate that superconductivity in Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$ intercalated with Cu, Nb or Sr is nematic with rotational symmetry breaking. Motivated by this observation, we present a model study of nematic and chiral superconductivity induced by odd-parity fluctuations. We show that odd-parity fluctuations in the two-component $E_u$ representation of $D_{3d}$ crystal point group can generate attractive interaction in both the even-parity $s$-wave and odd-parity $E_u$ pairing channels, but repulsive interaction in other odd-parity pairing channels. Coulomb repulsion can suppress $s$-wave pairing relative to $E_u$ pairing, and thus the latter can have a higher critical temperature. $E_u$ pairing has two distinct phases: a nematic phase and a chiral phase, both of which can be realized in our model. When $s$-wave and $E_u$ pairings have similar instability temperature, we find an intermediate phase in which both types of pairing coexist.

9 pages, 2 figures

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Cited by in corpus (10)

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• Generalized Rashba Electron-Phonon Coupling and Superconductivity in Strontium Titanate
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• Synergetic ferroelectricity and superconductivity in zero-density Dirac semimetals near quantum criticality
• A theory of criticality for quantum ferroelectric metals
• Temperature tuned Fermi surface topology and segmentation in non-centrosymmetric superconductors
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• On the existence of nematic-superconducting states in the Ginzburg-Landau regime
• Unconventional superconductivity from electronic dipole fluctuations