New Topological Superconductors using Flat Bands, Orbital Effects, and Quantum Critical Points

Details

  • Period: 2019-01-01 – 2022-12-31
  • Funder: Swedish Research Council
  • Type of funding: Research Project Grant

Description

Project title: New Topological Superconductors using Flat Bands, Orbital Effects, and Quantum Critical Points
Main applicant: Annica Black-Schaffer, Division of Materials Theory
Grant amount: 3 259 000 SEK for the period 2019-2022
Funder: Project grant from the Swedish Research Council

This project aims at theoretically discover and characterize entirely new quantum states of matter by novel combinations of global topology and local superconducting order. More specifically, the project takes a new and systematic approach to finding new topological superconductors, by (A) starting from complex but common normal electronic structures and by (B) significantly expanding the class of known superconductors spontaneously breaking time-reversal symmetry. In part (A) I will study materials with normal-state flat energy bands, emerging due to non-trivial topology, and materials with multiple low-energy orbitals, which each harbor large possibilities for topological superconductivity. In part (B) I will focus on two very promising new possibilities for time-reversal symmetry breaking superconductivity; as an intermediary phase in the quantum critical region of nodal superconductors and in flat band surface states of nodal-line superconductors. Specific targets range from achieving high-temperature superconductivity in topological flat band materials, including different graphene systems, to finding new time-reversal symmetry breaking chiral states in strongly correlated materials and new exotic phenomena in nematic multiorbital superconductors. The project employs a wide range of techniques, from analytically tractable Green’s function methods to large-scale numerical calculations of inhomogeneous superconducting systems and strongly correlated materials.

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