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Surface-Selective Probe of Spin-Triplet Superconductivity in Rhombohedral Graphene

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2026-08-04 v1 Strongly Correlated Electrons Superconductivity

Abstract

Superconductivity in rhombohedral graphene has been observed across many layer numbers, with mounting evidence pointing toward spin-triplet pairing, yet complementary probes of the superconducting spin structure remain needed. Here we use one-sided WS2_2 proximity in rhombohedral pentalayer graphene (R5G) as a surface-selective spin-orbit probe. The induced Ising spin-orbit coupling is strongest for carriers localized near the WS2_2 interface, allowing the displacement field to tune the overlap between superconducting carriers and the spin-orbit perturbation. We observe a strongly asymmetric superconducting landscape: two robust pockets, SC1 and SC2, survive only on mutually opposite signs of displacement field, while a third pocket, SC3, is substantially weaker. Gate-tracking features, quantum oscillations, and self-consistent band-structure calculations identify the layer polarization and Fermi-surface character of the relevant carriers. The robust superconducting states are absent or strongly weakened when the active high-DOS carriers are polarized toward the WS2_2 interface. Since Ising spin-orbit coupling is compatible with time-reversed spin-singlet pairing but competes with same-spin intervalley triplet pairing by canting or pinning the parent spin texture, this surface-selective suppression provides additional evidence for spin-triplet superconductivity involving both hole-like and electron-like carriers. Our results establish one-sided TMD proximity as a displacement-field-tunable probe of superconducting spin structure in rhombohedral graphene.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2608.03870,
  title  = {Surface-Selective Probe of Spin-Triplet Superconductivity in Rhombohedral Graphene},
  author = {Kilian Krötzsch and Zekang Zhou and Kryštof Kolář and Yonggen Li and Kenji Watanabe and Takashi Taniguchi and Moty Heiblum and Cyprian Lewandowski and Mitali Banerjee},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.03870},
  year   = {2026}
}