Chiral and topological superconductivity in isospin polarized multilayer graphene
A microscopic mechanism for chiral p-wave superconductivity from Coulomb repulsion is proposed for spin- and valley-polarized state of rhombohedral multilayer graphene. The superconducting instability arises when strong Thomas-Fermi screening of the Coulomb potential allows Friedel oscillations to take over - leading to an effective attraction on length scales below the Fermi wavelength. The superconducting critical temperature is largest at low density below a Lifshitz transition to an annular Fermi sea, where the additional pocket strongly enhances Thomas-Fermi screening. The Lifshitz transition also marks a topological phase transition from a trivial to a topological superconducting phase hosting Majorana fermions. The chirality of the superconducting order parameter is selected by the chirality of the valley-polarized Bloch electrons. Our results are in reasonable agreement with observations in a recent experiment on tetralayer graphene.
Authors
- Max Geier (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7552-5763)
- Margarita Davydova (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8482-5832)
- Liang Fu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8803-1017)
Institutions
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- IIT@MIT (US)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2025-12-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-66902-6
- Citations
- 6
- Primary Topic
- Topological Materials and Phenomena
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 7.48
Funders
- California Institute of Technology
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics
- U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command
- Army Research Office