Phonon-mediated intrinsic topological superconductivity in Fermi arcs

Abstract

We propose that phonons can intrinsically mediate topological superconductivity on the surface of Weyl semimetals. Weyl semimetals are gapless topological materials with nondegenerate zero energy surface states known as Fermi arcs. We derive the phonon spectrum and electron-phonon coupling in an effective model of a Weyl semimetal and apply weak-coupling Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory of superconductivity. In a slab geometry, we find that surface superconductivity dominates over bulk superconductivity in a range of chemical potentials around the Weyl nodes. The superconducting gap function realizes spinless chiral $p$-wave Cooper pairing in the Fermi arcs, leading to Majorana bound states in the core of vortices. Furthermore, we find a suppression of the absolute value of the gap in the center of the Fermi arcs, which is not captured by a local Hubbard attraction. The suppression is due to the nonlocal origin of electron-phonon coupling, leading to a layer dependence which has important consequences for topological surface states.

15 pages, 7 figures, accepted in Physical Review B

References in corpus (59)

• Non-Abelian Anyons and Topological Quantum Computation
• Superconducting proximity effect and Majorana fermions at the surface of a topological insulator
• Unpaired Majorana fermions in quantum wires
• Weyl and Dirac Semimetals in Three Dimensional Solids
• Paired states of fermions in two dimensions with breaking of parity and time-reversal symmetries, and the fractional quantum Hall effect
• Classification of topological insulators and superconductors in three spatial dimensions
• Helical liquids and Majorana bound states in quantum wires
• Topological Materials: Weyl Semimetals
• Topological superconductors: a review
• Introduction to topological superconductivity and Majorana fermions
• Superconductivity in Weyl Semimetal Candidate MoTe2
• Superconductivity of doped Weyl semimetals: finite-momentum pairing and electronic analogues of the 3He-A phase
• Two-dimensional p-wave superconducting states with magnetic moments on a conventional s-wave superconductor
• Are the double Fermi arcs of Dirac semimetals topologically protected?
• Superconductivity in Weyl metals
• Dispersion of Fermi arcs in Weyl semimetals and their evolutions to Dirac cones
• Two-dimensional altermagnets: Superconductivity in a minimal microscopic model
• Time-reversal invariant topological superconductivity in doped Weyl semimetals
• Odd-parity superconductivity from phonon-mediated pairing: Application to Cu${}_x$Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$
• Odd parity superconductivity in Weyl semimetals
• Surface Superconductivity in the type II Weyl Semimetal TaIrTe4
• Superconductivity in Type-II Weyl Semimetals
• Intrinsic Time-reversal-invariant Topological Superconductivity in Thin Films of Iron-based Superconductors
• Polymorphic PtBi2: Growth, structure and superconducting properties
• Superconducting Arcs
• Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition in the type-I Weyl semimetal PtBi${}_2$
• Dirac semimetals $A_{3}Bi$ ($A$=Na,K,Rb) as $Z_2$ Weyl semimetals
• Electron-phonon interaction on the surface of a 3D topological insulator
• Surface superconductivity in the topological Weyl semimetal t-PtBi${}_2$
• Topological Superconductivity Mediated by Skyrmionic Magnons
• Surface superconductivity in the Weyl semimetal MoTe2 detected by point contact spectroscopy
• Many-body effects on superconductivity mediated by double-magnon processes in altermagnets
• Mechanism, time-reversal symmetry and topology of superconductivity in noncentrosymmetric systems
• Proposed Spontaneous Generation of Magnetic Fields by Curved Layers of a Chiral Superconductor
• Aspects of topological superconductivity in 2D systems: noncollinear magnetism, skyrmions, and higher-order topology
• Topological stability of Majorana zero-modes in superconductor-topological insulator systems
• Surface Fermi arcs in $Z_2$ Weyl semimetals $A_{3}Bi$ (A=Na, K, Rb)
• Phonon-mediated superconductivity in doped monolayer materials
• Interface-induced magnetization in altermagnets and antiferromagnets
• Electron-phonon interaction and point contact enhanced superconductivity in trigonal PtBi2
• Electronic structure of the surface superconducting Weyl semimetal PtBi${}_2$
• Andreev Reflection in Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy of Unconventional Superconductors
• Multiband strong-coupling superconductors with spontaneously broken time-reversal symmetry
• Intrinsic surface superconducting instability in Type-I Weyl Semimetals
• Chemical Principles of Intrinsic Topological Superconductors
• Fermi arcs dominating the electronic surface properties of trigonal PtBi${}_2$
• Topological superconductivity mediated by magnons of helical magnetic states
• Enhanced weak superconductivity in trigonal $\gamma$-PtBi${}_2$
• Topological quantum transition driven by charge-phonon coupling in the Haldane Chern insulator
• Stability of superconducting gap symmetries arising from antiferromagnetic magnons
• Holstein polaron in a pseudospin-$1$ quantum spin Hall system: first and second order topological phase transitions
• Self-consistent surface superconductivity in time-reversal symmetric Weyl semimetals
• Topological superconductivity induced by a Kitaev spin liquid
• Magnon-mediated topological superconductivity in a quantum wire
• Topological Interlayer Superconductivity in a van der Waals Heterostructure
• Tunneling spectra of impurity states in unconventional superconductors
• Strong-coupling approach to temperature dependence of competing orders of superconductivity: Possible time-reversal symmetry breaking and nontrivial topology
• Helical Topological Superconducting Pairing at Finite Excitation Energies
• Emergent topological phases and coexistence of gapless and spectral-localized Floquet quantum spin Hall states via electron-phonon interaction

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Ginzburg-Landau theory for unconventional surface superconductivity in PtBi${}_2$
• Spin-dependent quasiparticle lifetimes in altermagnets
• Higher-order topological superconductivity in type-II time-reversal-symmetric Weyl semimetals with a hybrid pairing
• Surface Functional Renormalization Group for Layered Quantum Materials
• Mechanism for Nodal Topological Superconductivity on PtBi${}_2$ Surface
• Beyond spin-1/2: Multipolar spin-orbit coupling in noncentrosymmetric crystals with time-reversal symmetry