Superconducting Arcs

Abstract

An essential ingredient for the production of Majorana fermions that can be used for quantum computing is the presence of topological superconductivity. As bulk topological superconductors remain elusive, the most promising approaches exploit proximity-induced superconductivity making systems fragile and difficult to realize. Weyl semimetals due to their intrinsic topology belong to potential candidates too, but search for Majorana fermions has always been connected with the superconductivity in the bulk, leaving the possibility of intrinsic superconductivity of the Fermi surface arcs themselves practically without attention, even from the theory side.Here, by means of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and ab-initio calculations, we unambiguously identify topological Fermi arcs on two opposing surfaces of the non-centrosymmetric Weyl material PtBi2. We show that these states become superconducting at different temperatures around 10K. Remarkably, the corresponding coherencepeaks appear as the strongest and sharpest excitations ever detected by photoemission from solids, suggesting significant technological relevance. Our findings indicate that topological superconductivity in PtBi2 occurs exclusively at the surface, which not only makes it an ideal platform to host Majorana fermions, but may also lead to a unique quantum phase - an intrinsic topological SNS Josephson junction.

arXiv comment8 pages, 4 figures and Supplementary Information

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Cited by in corpus (27)

• Surface superconductivity in the topological Weyl semimetal t-PtBi${}_2$
• Electronic structure of the surface superconducting Weyl semimetal PtBi${}_2$
• Fermi arcs dominating the electronic surface properties of trigonal PtBi${}_2$
• Enhanced weak superconductivity in trigonal $\gamma$-PtBi${}_2$
• Chiral Meissner effect in time-reversal invariant Weyl superconductors
• Superconductivity in Two-Dimensional Systems with Unconventional Rashba Bands
• Superconductivity and a van Hove singularity confined to the surface of a topological semimetal
• Phonon-mediated intrinsic topological superconductivity in Fermi arcs
• Self-consistent surface superconductivity in time-reversal symmetric Weyl semimetals
• Electron dynamics in a three-dimensional Brillouin zone analysed by machine learning
• Ultrafast carrier dynamics throughout the three-dimensional Brillouin zone of the Weyl semimetal PtBi${}_2$
• Topological nodal $i$-wave superconductivity in PtBi${}_2$
• Superconducting density of states of PtPb4
• Investigation on high-order planar Hall effect in trigonal PtBi${}_2$
• Ginzburg-Landau theory for unconventional surface superconductivity in PtBi${}_2$
• Dissipationless transport signature of topological nodal lines
• Interplay between inversion and translation symmetries in trigonal PtBi${}_2$
• Atomic Visualization of Bulk and Surface Superconductivity in Weyl Semimetal γ-PtBi2
• Gapless Topological Peierls-like instabilities in more than one dimension
• Direct observation of the surface superconducting gap in the topological superconductor candidate β-PdBi2
• Spatial Chern-Simons Interactions and Complex Magnetic Penetration Depth
• Higher-order topological superconductivity in type-II time-reversal-symmetric Weyl semimetals with a hybrid pairing
• Mechanism for Nodal Topological Superconductivity on PtBi${}_2$ Surface
• Fermi surface and topology of multiband superconductor BeAu
• Topological materials with extensive flat-band surface states
• Robust boundary Luttinger surfaces in topological band structures
• Beyond spin-1/2: Multipolar spin-orbit coupling in noncentrosymmetric crystals with time-reversal symmetry