Topological and nematic superconductivity mediated by ferro-SU(4) fluctuations in twisted bilayer graphene

Yuxuan Wang, Jian Kang, Rafael M. Fernandes

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Abstract

We propose an SU(4) spin-valley-fermion model to investigate the superconducting instabilities of twisted bilayer graphene (TBG). In this approach, bosonic fluctuations associated with an emergent SU(4) symmetry, corresponding to combined rotations in valley and spin spaces, couple to the low-energy fermions that comprise the flat bands. These fluctuations are peaked at zero wave vector, reflecting the "ferromagnetic-like"SU(4) ground state recently found in strong-coupling solutions of microscopic models for TBG. Focusing on electronic states related to symmetry-imposed points of the Fermi surface, dubbed here "valley hot-spots"and "van Hove hot-spots,"we find that the coupling to the itinerant electrons partially lifts the huge degeneracy of the ferro-SU(4) ground state manifold, favoring intervalley order, spin-valley coupled order, ferromagnetic order, spin-current order, and valley-polarized order, depending on details of the band structure. These fluctuations, in turn, promote attractive pairing interactions in a variety of closely competing channels, including a nodeless f-wave state, a nodal i-wave state, and topological d+id and p+ip states with unusual Chern numbers 2 and 4, respectively. Nematic superconductivity, although not realized as a primary instability of the system, appears as a consequence of the near-degeneracy of superconducting order parameters that transform as one-dimensional and two-dimensional irreducible representations of the point group D6.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number024506
JournalPhysical Review B
Volume103
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 11 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
J.K. is supported by Priority Academic Program Development (PAPD) of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions. R.M.F. was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division, under Award No. DE-SC0020045. We thank the hospitality of the Aspen Center for Physics, supported by NSF PHY-1066293, where this work was initiated.

Funding Information:
We thank A. Chubukov, D. Chichinadze, L. Classen, S. Kivelson, and O. Vafek for fruitful discussions. Y.W. is supported by the startup funds at University of Florida. J.K. is supported by Priority Academic Program Development (PAPD) of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions. R.M.F. was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division, under Award No. DE-SC0020045. We thank the hospitality of the Aspen Center for Physics, supported by NSF PHY-1066293, where this work was initiated.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Physical Society.

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