Superconductivity of doped Weyl semimetals: finite-momentum pairing and electronic analogues of the 3He-A phase

TL;DR

This paper investigates superconducting states in doped Weyl semimetals, revealing a favored finite-momentum pairing state with unique topological properties and comparing it to known superfluid phases.

Contribution

It demonstrates that finite-momentum (FFLO) pairing is energetically favored in doped Weyl semimetals and explores their topological surface states.

Findings

Finite-momentum pairing state is energetically favored.

The even-parity state has non-trivial topological nodes.

Surface flat bands are supported by the nodal state.

Abstract

We study superconducting states of doped inversion-symmetric Weyl semimetals. Specifically, we consider a lattice model realizing a Weyl semimetal with an inversion symmetry and study the superconducting instability in the presence of a short-ranged attractive interaction. With a phonon-mediated attractive interaction, we find two competing states: a fully gapped finite-momentum (FFLO) pairing state and a nodal even-parity pairing state. We show that, in a BCS-type approximation, the finite-momentum pairing state is energetically favored over the usual even-parity paired state and is robust against weak disorder. Though energetically unfavorable, the even-parity pairing state provides an electronic analogue of the 3He-A phase in that the nodes of the even-parity state carry non-trivial winding numbers and therefore support a surface flat band. We briefly discuss other possible superconducting states that may be realized in Weyl semimetals.