Topological superconducting phases from inversion symmetry breaking order in spin-orbit-coupled systems

TL;DR

This paper explores how inversion symmetry breaking in spin-orbit-coupled systems leads to degenerate superconducting phases with topological properties, including Majorana modes, and discusses phase transitions and experimental implications.

Contribution

It reveals a novel degeneracy of superconducting states due to conserved helicity, resulting in an enlarged symmetry and topological defects with Majorana zero modes.

Findings

Degenerate s-wave and odd-parity superconducting instabilities near quantum-critical point.

Existence of a $U(1) imes U(1)$ symmetry leading to exotic topological defects.

Phase diagram showing topological and trivial superconducting states and transitions.

Abstract

We analyze the superconducting instabilities in the vicinity of the quantum-critical point of an inversion symmetry breaking order. We first show that the fluctuations of the inversion symmetry breaking order lead to two degenerate superconducting (SC) instabilities, one in the $s$-wave channel, and the other in a time-reversal invariant odd-parity pairing channel (the simplest case being the same as the of $^3$He-B phase). Remarkably, we find that unlike many well-known examples, the selection of the pairing symmetry of the condensate is independent of the momentum-space structure of the collective mode that mediates the pairing interaction. We found that this degeneracy is a result of the existence of a conserved fermionic helicity, $\chi$, and the two degenerate channels correspond to even and odd combinations of SC order parameters with $\chi=\pm1$. As a result, the system has an enlarged symmetry $U(1)\times U(1)$, with each $U(1)\times U(1)$ corresponding to one value of the helicity $\chi$. Because of the enlarged symmetry, this system admits exotic topological defects such as a fractional quantum vortex, which we show has a Majorana zero mode bound at its core. We discuss how the enlarged symmetry can be lifted by small perturbations, such as the Coulomb interaction or Fermi surface splitting in the presence of broken inversion symmetry, and we show that the resulting superconducting state can be topological or trivial depending on parameters. The $U(1)\times U(1)$ symmetry is restored at the phase boundary between the topological and trivial SC states, and allows for a transition between topologically distinct SC phases without the vanishing of the order parameter. We present a global phase diagram of the superconducting states and discuss possible experimental implications.