paper

Superconductivity and bosonic fluid emerging from Moiré flat bands

arXiv:2111.10018 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.106.184517

Abstract

Although evidence of inter-valley attraction-mediated by phonon or topological fluctuations is accumulating, the origin of superconductivity in the flat-band quantum moiré materials remains an open question. Here, instead of attempting to pinpoint the origin of the superconductivity, we aim at identifying universal properties of moiré flat bands that shall emerge in the presence of inter-valley attractions. We show that by matching the interaction strength of inter-valley attraction with intra-valley repulsion, the flat-band limit becomes exactly solvable. Away from the flat-band limit, the system can be simulated via quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) methods without sign problem for any fillings. Combining analytic solutions with large-scale numerical simulations, we show that upon increasing temperature, the superconducting phase melts into a bosonic fluid of Cooper pairs with large/diverging compressibility. In contrast to flat-band attractive Hubbard models, where similar effects arise only for on-site interactions, our study indicates this physics is a universal property of moiré flat bands, regardless of microscopic details such as the range of interactions and/or spin-oribt couplings. At higher temperature, the boson fluid phase gives its way to a pseudo gap phase, where some Cooper pairs are torn apart by thermal fluctuations, resulting in fermion density of states inside the gap. Unlike the superconducting transition temperature, which is very sensitive to doping and twisting angles, the gap and the temperature scale of the boson fluid phase and the pseudo gap phase are found to be nearly independent of doping level and/or flat-band bandwidth. The relevance of these phases with experimental discoveries in the flat band quantum moiré materials is discussed.

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