Surface Bogoliubov-Dirac cones and helical Majorana hinge modes in superconducting Dirac semimetals

Abstract

In the presence of certain symmetries, three-dimensional Dirac semimetals can harbor not only surface Fermi arcs, but also surface Dirac cones. Motivated by the experimental observation of rotation-symmetry-protected Dirac semimetal states in iron-based superconductors, we investigate the potential intrinsic topological phases in a $C_{4z}$-rotational invariant superconducting Dirac semimetal with $s_{\pm }$-wave pairing. When the normal state harbors only surface Fermi arcs on the side surfaces, we find that an interesting gapped superconducting state with a quartet of Bogoliubov-Dirac cones on each side surface can be realized, even though the first-order topology of its bulk is trivial. When the normal state simultaneously harbors surface Fermi arcs and surface Dirac cones, we find that a second-order time-reversal invariant topological superconductor with helical Majorana hinge states can be realized. The criteria for these two distinct topological phases have a simple geometric interpretation in terms of three characteristic surfaces in momentum space. By reducing the bulk material to a thin film normal to the axis of rotation symmetry, we further find that a two-dimensional first-order time-reversal invariant topological superconductor can be realized if the inversion symmetry is broken by applying a gate voltage. Our work reveals that diverse topological superconducting phases and types of Majorana modes can be realized in superconducting Dirac semimetals.

16 pages, 8 figures

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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Competing Vortex Topologies in Iron-based Superconductors
• Coexistence of bulk-nodal and surface-nodeless Cooper pairings in a superconducting Dirac semimetal
• Corner- and sublattice-sensitive Majorana zero modes on the kagome lattice
• Sublattice-enriched tunability of bound states in second-order topological insulators and superconductors
• Nodal higher-order topological superconductivity from a ${\mathcal{C}}_4$-symmetric Dirac semimetal
• Sublattice-sensitive Majorana Modes
• Signature of point nodal superconductivity in the Dirac semimetal PdTe
• Controlling Majorana modes by $p$-wave pairing in two-dimensional $p+id$ topological superconductors
• Higher-order topological superconductor phases in a multilayer system
• Majorana corner states in an attractive quantum spin Hall insulator with opposite in-plane Zeeman energy at two sublattice sites
• Anomalous Linear and Quadratic Nodeless Surface Dirac Cones in Three-Dimensional Dirac Semimetals
• Majorana Flat Bands in the Vortex Line of Superconducting Weyl Semimetals