1. Electric field control of superconductivity and quantized anomalous Hall effects in rhombohedral tetralayer graphene
- Author
-
Choi, Youngjoon, Choi, Ysun, Valentini, Marco, Patterson, Caitlin L., Holleis, Ludwig F. W., Sheekey, Owen I., Stoyanov, Hari, Cheng, Xiang, Taniguchi, Takashi, Watanabe, Kenji, and Young, Andrea F.
- Subjects
Condensed Matter - Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics ,Condensed Matter - Strongly Correlated Electrons ,Condensed Matter - Superconductivity - Abstract
Inducing superconducting correlations in chiral edge states is predicted to generate topologically protected zero energy modes with exotic quantum statistics. Experimental efforts to date have focused on engineering interfaces between superconducting materials, typically amorphous metals, and semiconducting quantum Hall or quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) systems. However, the strong interfacial disorder inherent can prevent the formation of isolated topological modes. An appealing alternative is to use low-density flat band materials where the ground state can be tuned between intrinsic superconducting and quantum anomalous Hall states using only the electric field effect. However, quantized transport and superconductivity have not been simultaneously achieved. Here, we show that rhombohedral tetralayer graphene aligned to a hexagonal boron nitride substrate hosts a quantized anomalous Hall state at superlattice filling $\nu = -1$ as well as a superconducting state at $\nu \approx -3.1$ at zero magnetic field. Remarkably, gate voltage can also be used to actuate nonvolatile switching of the chirality in the quantum anomalous Hall state, allowing arbitrarily reconfigurable networks of topological edge modes in locally gated devices. Thermodynamic compressibility measurements further reveal a topologically ordered fractional Chern insulator at $\nu = 2/3$, also stable at zero magnetic field, enabling proximity coupling between superconductivity and fractionally charged edge modes. Finally, we show that integrating an additional transition metal dichalcogenide layer to the heterostructure enhances the maximum superconducting critical temperature and nucleates new superconducting pockets, while leaving the topology of $\nu = -1$ the quantum anomalous Hall state intact. Our results pave the way for hybrid interfaces between superconductors and topological edge states in the low-disorder limit.
- Published
- 2024