English

Chiral superconductivity near a fractional Chern insulator

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2025-07-29 v2 Superconductivity

Abstract

Superconductivity arising from fully spin-polarized, repulsively interacting electrons can host intrinsically chiral Cooper pairs and Majorana zero modes, yet no concrete microscopic route to such a state has been established. Motivated by recent observations in twisted homobilayer MoTe2_2 and rhombohedral pentalayer graphene, where fractional Chern insulators (FCIs) appear adjacent to spin-valley-polarized superconductors, we investigate a minimal model: spinless electrons in the lowest Landau level subject to a tunable periodic potential. Large-scale density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) calculations reveal that, as the FCI gap closes, two nearly degenerate phases emerge before the system turns metallic: a chiral ff-wave superconductor and a 3×3\sqrt{3} \times \sqrt{3} charge-density wave (CDW) whose energies differ by less than 1%1\%. These two competing states mirror the superconducting and re-entrant integer quantum Hall (RIQH) phases observed experimentally near the FCI regime. The superconducting dome survives realistic Coulomb interaction, light doping, and various lattice geometry. Melting the FCI therefore provides a new mechanism for realizing spin-polarized chiral superconductivity and RIQH order. We predict that twisted MoTe2_2 at larger twist angles will develop a superconducting dome even at filling ν=2/3\nu = 2/3, and suppressing this superconductivity with a magnetic field should drive the system into an RIQH state.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.07921,
  title  = {Chiral superconductivity near a fractional Chern insulator},
  author = {Taige Wang and Michael P. Zaletel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.07921},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

9 pages, 5 figures. (v2) Correct a few typos, including the chiral central charge