English

Topological superconductivity in the extended Kitaev-Heisenberg model

Superconductivity 2018-01-17 v1 Strongly Correlated Electrons

Abstract

We study superconducting pairing in the doped Kitaev-Heisenberg model by taking into account the recently proposed symmetric off-diagonal exchange Γ\Gamma. By performing a mean-field analysis, we classify all possible superconducting phases in terms of symmetry, explicitly taking into account effects of spin-orbit coupling. Solving the resulting gap equations self-consistently, we map out a phase diagram that involves several topologically nontrivial states. For Γ<0\Gamma<0, we find a competition between a time-reversal symmetry breaking chiral phase with Chern number ±1\pm1 and a time-reversal symmetric nematic phase that breaks the rotational symmetry of the lattice. On the other hand, for Γ0\Gamma \geq 0 we find a time-reversal symmetric phase that preserves all the lattice symmetries, thus yielding clearly distinguishable experimental signatures for all superconducting phases. Both of the time-reversal symmetric phases display a transition to a Z2\mathbb{Z}_2 non-trivial phase at high doping levels. Finally, we also include a symmetry-allowed spin-orbit coupling kinetic energy and show that it destroys a tentative symmetry protected topological order at lower doping levels. However, it can be used to tune the time-reversal symmetric phases into a Z2\mathbb{Z}_2 non-trivial phase even at lower doping.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1710.10014,
  title  = {Topological superconductivity in the extended Kitaev-Heisenberg model},
  author = {Johann Schmidt and Daniel D. Scherer and Annica M. Black-Schaffer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.10014},
  year   = {2018}
}