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Nodal band-off-diagonal superconductivity in twisted graphene superlattices.

Authors :
Christos, Maine
Sachdev, Subir
Scheurer, Mathias S.
Source :
Nature Communications; 11/6/2023, Vol. 14 Issue 1, p1-11, 11p
Publication Year :
2023

Abstract

The superconducting state and mechanism are among the least understood phenomena in twisted graphene systems. Recent tunneling experiments indicate a transition between nodal and gapped pairing with electron filling, which is not naturally understood within current theory. We demonstrate that the coexistence of superconductivity and flavor polarization leads to pairing channels that are guaranteed by symmetry to be entirely band-off-diagonal, with a variety of consequences: most notably, the pairing invariant under all symmetries can have Bogoliubov Fermi surfaces in the superconducting state with protected nodal lines, or may be fully gapped, depending on parameters, and the band-off-diagonal chiral p-wave state exhibits transitions between gapped and nodal regions upon varying the doping. We demonstrate that band-off-diagonal pairing can be the leading state when only phonons are considered, and is also uniquely favored by fluctuations of a time-reversal-symmetric intervalley coherent order motivated by recent experiments. Consequently, band-off-diagonal superconductivity allows for the reconciliation of several key experimental observations in graphene moiré systems. The authors theoretically study superconductivity in twisted-bilayer and twisted-trilayer graphene, finding that flavor polarization allows for Cooper pairing in which the pairs consist of electrons in different bands. Both intervalley phonons and fluctuations of a time-reversal-symmetric intervalley coherent order can favor such pairing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
20411723
Volume :
14
Issue :
1
Database :
Complementary Index
Journal :
Nature Communications
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
173457236
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-42471-4