English

Linking structures of doubly charged nodal surfaces in centrosymmetric superconductors

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2021-06-30 v2

Abstract

In topological semimetals and nodal superconductors, band crossings between occupied and unoccupied bands form stable nodal points/lines/surfaces carrying quantized topological charges. In particular, in centrosymmetric systems, some nodal structures at the Fermi energy EFE_F carry two distinct topological charges, and thus they are called doubly charged nodes. Here we show that doubly charged nodal surfaces of centrosymmetric superconductors in three-dimensions always develop peculiar linking structures with nodal points or lines formed between occupied bands below EFE_F. Such linking structures can naturally explain the inherent relationship between the charge of the node below EFE_F and the two charges of the nodal surfaces at EFE_F. Based on the Altland-Zirnbauer (AZ)-type ten-fold classification of nodes with additional inversion I\mathcal{I} symmetry, which is called the AZ+I+\mathcal{I} classification, we provide the complete list of linking structures of doubly charged nodes in centrosymmetric systems. The linking structures of doubly charged nodes clearly demonstrate that not only the local band structure around the node but also the global band structure play a critical role in characterizing gapless topological phases.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2012.08908,
  title  = {Linking structures of doubly charged nodal surfaces in centrosymmetric superconductors},
  author = {Sunje Kim and Dong-Choon Ryu and Bohm-Jung Yang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.08908},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

16 pages, 3+5 figures