English

Unconventional superconductivity in a two-dimensional repulsive gas of fermions with spin-orbit coupling

Superconductivity 2013-11-13 v1 Strongly Correlated Electrons

Abstract

We investigate the superconducting instability of a two-dimensional repulsive fermion gas with Rashba spin-orbit coupling \alR\al_R. Using renormalization group approach, we find the superconducting transition temperature as a function of the dimensionless ratio Θ=12m\alR2/EF\Theta={1}{2}m\al_R^2/E_F where EF=0E_F=0 when the smaller Fermi surface shrinks to a (Dirac) point. The general trend is that superconductivity is enhanced as Θ\Theta increases, but in an intermediate regime Θ0.1\Theta\sim0.1, a dome-like behavior appears. At a very small value of Θ\Theta, the angular momentum channel jzj_z in which superconductivity occurs is quite high. With increasing Θ\Theta, jzj_z decreases with a step of 2 down to jz=6j_z=6, after which we find the sequence jz=6,4,6,2j_z=6, 4, 6, 2, the last value of which continues to Θ\Theta\rightarrow\infty. In an extended range of Θ\Theta, the superconducting gap predominantly resides on the large Fermi surface, while Josephson coupling induces a much smaller gap on the small Fermi surface. Below the superconducting transition temperature, we apply mean field theory to derive the self-consistent equations and find the condensation energies. The state with the lowest condensation energy is an unconventional superconducting state which breaks time reversal symmetry, and in which singlet and triplet pairings are mixed. In general, these states are topologically nontrivial, and the Chern number of the state with total angular momentum jzj_z is C=2jzC=2j_z.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1307.7953,
  title  = {Unconventional superconductivity in a two-dimensional repulsive gas of fermions with spin-orbit coupling},
  author = {Luyang Wang and Oskar Vafek},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1307.7953},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

19 pages, 7 figures