Topological Kondo Superconductors
Abstract
Spin-triplet -wave superconductors are promising candidates for topological superconductors. They have been proposed in various heterostructures where a material with strong spin-orbit interaction is coupled to a conventional -wave superconductor by proximity effect. However, topological superconductors existing in nature and driven purely by strong electron correlations are yet to be studied. Here we propose a realization of such a system in a class of Kondo lattice materials in the absence of spin-orbit coupling and proximity effect. Therein, the odd-parity Kondo hybridization mediates ferromagnetic spin-spin coupling and leads to spin-triplet resonant-valence-bond (-RVB) pairing between local moments. Spin-triplet -wave topological superconductivity is reached when Kondo effect co-exists with -RVB. We identify the topological nature by the non-trivial topological invariant and the Majorana fermions at edges. Our results offer a comprehensive understanding of experimental observations on UTe, a U-based ferromagnetic heavy-electron superconductor.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2301.00538,
title = {Topological Kondo Superconductors},
author = {Yung-Yeh Chang and Khoe Van Nguyen and Kuang-Lung Chen and Yen-Wen Lu and Chung-Yu Mou and Chung-Hou Chung},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.00538},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
13 pages, 7 figures